英语美文背诵大赛

(1) The Attitude towards Your Life If your life feels like it is lacking the power that you want and the motivation that you need, sometimes all you have to do is shift your point of view. By training your thoughts to concentrate on the bright side of things, you are more likely to have the incentive to follow through on your goals. You are less likely to be held back by negative ideas that might limit your performance. Your life can be enhanced, and your happiness enriched, when you choose to change your perspective. Don't leave your future to chance, or wait for things to get better mysteriously on their own. You must go in the direction of your hopes and aspirations. Begin to build your confidence, and work through problems rather than avoid them. Remember that power is not necessarily control over situations, but the ability to deal with whatever comes your way. Always believe that good things are possible, and remember that mistakes can be lessons that lead to discoveries. Take your fear and transform it into trust; learn to rise above anxiety and doubt. Turn your "worry hours" into "productive hours". Take the energy that you have wasted and direct it toward every worthwhile effort that you can be involved in. You will see beautiful things happen when you allow yourself to experience the joys of life. You will find happiness when you adopt positive thinking into your daily routine and make it an important part of your world. (2) The Happy Door Happiness is like a pebble dropped into a pool to set in motion an ever-widening circle of ripples. As Stevenson has said, being happy is a duty. There is no exact definition of the word happiness. Happy people are happy for all sorts of reasons. The key is not wealth or physical well-being, since we find beggars, invalids and so-called failures, who are extremely happy. Being happy is a sort of unexpected dividend. But staying happy is an accomplishment, a triumph of soul and character. It is not selfish to strive for it. It is, indeed, a duty to ourselves and others. Being unhappy is like an infectious disease. It causes people to shrink away from the sufferer. He soon finds himself alone, miserable and embittered. There is, however, a cure so simple as to seem, at first glance, ridiculous; if you don’t feel happy, pretend to be! It works. Before long you will find that instead of repelling people, you attract them. You discover how deeply rewarding it is to be the center of wider and wider circles of good will. Then the make-believe becomes a reality. You possess the secret of peace of mind, and can forget yourself in being of service to others. Being happy, once it is realized as a duty and established as a habit, opens doors into unimaginable gardens thronged with grateful friends. (3) The Hidden Gold There was once a farmer who had a fine olive orchard. He was very hard-working, and the farm always prospered under his care. But he knew that his three sons despised the farm work, and were eager to make wealth, through adventure. When the farmer was old, and felt that his time had come to die, he called the three sons to him and said, "My sons, there is a pot of gold hidden in the olive orchard. Dig for it, if you wish it." The sons tried to get him to tell them in what part of the orchard the gold was hidden; but he would tell them nothing more. After the farmer was dead, the sons went to work to find the pot of gold; since they did not know where the hiding-place was, they agreed to begin in a line, at one end of the orchard, and to dig until one of them should find the money. They dug until they had turned up the soil from one end of the orchard to the other, round the tree-roots and between them. But no pot of gold was to be found. It seemed as if someone must have stolen it, or as if the farmer had been wandering in his wits. The three sons were bitterly disappointed to have all their work for nothing. The next olive season, the olive trees in the orchard bore more fruit than they had ever given; when it was sold, it gave the sons a whole pot of gold. And when they saw how much money had come from the orchard, they suddenly understood what the wise father had meant when he said, "There is gold hidden in the orchard. Dig for it, if you wish it." (4) Youth Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of 60 more than a boy of 20. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust. Whether 60 or 16, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what’s next and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station: so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the Infinite, so long are you young. When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at 20, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at 80. (5) The Power of Words A group of frogs were traveling through the woods, and two of them fell into a deep pit. When the other frogs saw how deep the pit was, they told the two frogs that they were as good as dead. The two frogs ignored the comments and tried to jump up out of the pit with all their might. The other frogs kept telling them to stop, that they were as good as dead. Finally, one of the frogs took heed of what the other frogs were saying and gave up. He fell down and died. The other frog continued to jump as hard as he could. Once again, the crowd of frogs yelled at him to stop the pain and just die. He jumped even harder and finally made it out. When he got out, the other frogs said, "Did you not hear us?" The frog explained to them that he was a little deaf. He thought they were encouraging him the entire time. This story teaches us two lessons: 1. There is power of life and death in the tongue. An encouraging word to someone who is down can lift them up and help them make it through the day. 2. A destructive word to someone who is down can be what it takes to kill them. Be careful of what you say. Speak life to those who cross your path. The power of words is sometimes hard to understand that an encouraging word can go such a long way. (6) The Pleasure of Walking Walking gives us back our senses. We see, hear, smell the world as we never can when we ride. No matter what vehicle, it is the vehicle that is moving, not ourselves. We are trapped inside its fixed environment, and once we have taken in its sensory aspects — mainly in terms of comfort or discomfort — we turn off our perceptions and either go to sleep or open a magazine and begin dozing awake. But when we walk, the environment changes every moment and our senses are continuously being alerted. Around each corner of a city block, around each bend in a country road, there is something new to greet the eyes, the ears, the nose. Even the same walk, the one we may take every day, is never the same from one day to another, from one week and season to another. This is true not only in the country, but anywhere at all. In New York City, a group of executives who meet every weekday morning walk from their homes to their offices. Their way takes them through quiet streets of old brownstones, one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city, then up and over the Brooklyn Bridge with its cathedral arches supporting the weblike drapery of cables, then down into the tight skyscraper canyons of the financial district. On their daily route they see, hear, smell the city in all its seasonal changes, under bright and cloudy skies. Only the most inclement weather stops them — suitably dressed, they can walk with pleasure in spring rains, autumn drizzles, the sunlight of a summer morning or a soft winter snowfall. The river waters roll by below their feet, sullen or sparkling. Tugboats chug past, shoving and hauling their variously laden barges; on a shrouded morning, foghorns hoot and moan. The famous skyline of lower Manhattan rises before them, glittering in sun, afloat in mist, against a backdrop of sky never twice the same. (7) Venice Venice is a fascinating city between sea and sky. It is built on 117 islands. There aren’t any cars or buses because there are no highways in Venice. But it has 150 canals and 400 bridges. The narrow streets, with their historic names, are paved with flagstones, but have no footpaths. They are lined with flower-decked balconies, Madonnas, shop signs and lanterns. Artisans’ stalls and palaces stand side by side. The squares are charming. The brick bridges, with white stone trimmings, are pitched high to allow barges to pass under them. Every year thousands of tourists from the five continents visit this beautiful city. They are always amazed at the charm of her water and pellucid light, which can make them free from all dust and cooled by the sea breezes. But because the level of the surrounding waters is constantly rising, the exceptional position of Venice constitutes a threat to its very existence. And the Venetians love their city and want to stay there to save Venice from the sea. Now carious measures have already been taken and a plan to safeguard and remedy the position is under investigation. (8) Hard Work is Good for Health Scientists find that hard-working prestigious people live longer than average men and women. Career women are healthier than housewives. Evidence shows that the jobless are in poorer health than the job-holder. An investigation shows that whenever the unemployment rate increases by 1%, the death rate increases correspondingly by 2%. All this comes down to one point: work is helpful to health. Why is work good for health? It is because work keeps people busy, away from loneliness and solitude. Researches show that people feel unhappy, worried and solitary when they have nothing to do. Instead, the happiest are those who are busy. Many high achievers who love their careers feel that they are happiest when they are working hard. Work serves as a bridge between man and reality. By work, people come into contact with each other. By collective activity, they find friendship and warmth. This is helpful to health. The loss of work means the loss of everything. It affects man spiritually and makes him liable to disease. Besides, work gives one a sense of fulfillment and a sense of achievement. Work makes one feel his value and status in society. When a writer finishes his writing or a doctor successfully operates on a patient or a teacher sees his students grow, they are happy beyond words. From the above we can come to the conclusion that the more you work, the happier and healthier you will be. Let us work hard and study well and live a happy and healthy life. (9) How to Learn with Success To learn with success is not a very difficult task if some fundamental principles are laid down. While discussing this subject, I’d like to mention four indispensable principles: diligence, devotion, constancy, and punctuality. All things can be conquered by diligence. It makes the foolish wise, the poor rich, and the humble noble. It produces a wonderful effect. In learning, the work of a diligent fool doubles that of a lazy wit. Devotion means to set our heart on one thing at a time and give up all other thoughts. Never think of learning another subject while studying one subject. Those who often change their studies will never succeed in the long run. Therefore, in order to be successful we need devotion. Constancy makes success a certainty. In contrast, inconstancy often results in failure. If we study day after day, there is nothing that can not be achieved. We should remember a worthy proverb “Constant dropping of water wears away a stone.” Besides, there is another rule that contributes to one’s accomplishments, that is, punctuality. The habit of keeping regular hours is of extreme importance to successful learning. Work while you work; play while you play. Every man will certainly become strong and wise if he does so. (10) What I Have Lived for Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the verge of despair.     I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy -- ecstasy so great that I would have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness -- that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what -- at last -- I have found.      With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men, I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds away above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.     Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberated in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.      This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and I would gladly live it again if the chance were offered to me. 1