優美的英文文章

　　一篇好的文章不僅要有深刻鮮明的主題,更要有優美流暢的語言。語言表達得體與否,直接關係到文章質量的高低。下面是小編帶來的，歡迎閱讀!

　　勿以善小而不為

　　If you want your life to stand for peace and kindness, it's helpful to do kind, peaceful things. One of my favorite ways to do this is by developing my own helping rituals.

　　如果你想讓自己的生活安寧祥和，最好做一些友善平和的事情。我最喜歡的一種方式是培養自己樂於助人的習慣。

　　These little acts of kindness are opportunities to be of service and reminders of how good it feels to be kind and helpful.

　　這些小小的善行讓你有機會去幫助別人，讓你意識到待人友善、樂於助人的感覺有多好。

　　We live in a rural area of the San Francisco Bay Area. Most of what we see is beauty and nature. One of the exceptions to the beauty is the litter that some people throw out of their windows as they are driving on the rural roads.

　　我們住在舊金山聖弗朗西斯科灣地區的郊外。我們目所能及的幾乎都是美麗的自然風光。與這美景不太和諧的是有人驅車行駛在鄉間小路上時隨手從車窗往外扔垃圾。

　　One of the few drawbacks to living out the boondocks is that public services, such as litter collection, are less available than they are closer to the city.

　　而居住在這種偏遠的地方的一個缺點就是缺少必要的公共服務，例如，垃圾的收集就不如靠近市區那樣方便。

　　A helping ritual that I practice regularly with my two children is picking up litter in our surrounding areas. We've become so accustomed to doing this that my daughters will often say to me in animated voices, "There's some litter, Daddy, stop the car!"

　　我跟我的兩個孩子經常做的一件事就是撿拾我們周圍地區的垃圾。對此我們已經習以為常，我的女兒們經常會興奮地對我說，“爸爸，這兒有垃圾，請停一下車!”

　　And if we have time, we will often pull over and pick it up. It may seem strange, but we actually enjoy it. We pick up litter in parks, on sidewalks, practically anywhere. Once I even saw a complete stranger picking up litter close to where we live. He smiled at me and said, "I saw you doing it, and it seemed like a good idea."

　　只要時間來得及，我們總是將車開到路邊並將垃圾撿起來。這似乎有點不可思議，但我們真的喜歡這樣做。我們在公園裡，人行道上，幾乎任何地方撿拾垃圾。曾經有一次，我在我們家附近看到一位陌生人在撿垃圾。他笑著對我說，“我看到你這麼做了，看來是個好主意。”

　　Picking up litter is only one of an endless supply of possible helping rituals. You might like holding a door open for people, visiting lonely elderly people in nursing homes, or shoveling snow off someone else's driveway. Think of something that seems effortless yet helpful. It's funny, personally rewarding, and can be a good example. And everyone benefits.

　　撿垃圾只不過是無數善意行為中的一種形式而已。你可以為別人開門，或者去敬老院看望那些孤獨的老人，或者清除別人行車道上的積雪。總會想出一些似乎毫不費力但又非常有益的事情。這真的很有趣，自己會感覺很好，也為別人樹立了榜樣。每個人都會從中受益。

　　The Road to Happiness

　　If you look around at the men and women whom you can call happy, you will see that they allhave certain things in common. The most important of these things is an activity which at mostgradually builds up something that you are glad to see coming into existence. Women who takean instinctive pleasure in their children can get this kind of satisfaction out of bringing up afamily.

　　Artists and authors and men of science get happiness in this way if their own work seems goodto them. But there are many humbler forms of the same kind of pleasure. Many men who spendtheir working life in the city devote their weekends to voluntary and unremunerated toil in theirgardens, and when the spring comes, they experience all the joys of having created beauty.

　　The whole subject of happiness has, in my opinion,been treated too solemnly. It had beenthought that man cannot be happy without a theory of life or a religion. Perhaps those whohave been rendered unhappy by a bad theory may need a better theory to help them torecovery, just as you may need a tonic when you have been ill. But when things are normal aman should be healthy without a tonic and happy without a theory. It is the simple things thatreally matter. If a man delights in his wife and children, has success in work, and finds pleasurein the alternation of day and night, spring and autumn, he will be happy whatever hisphilosophy may be. If, on the other hand, he finds his wife fateful, his children’s noiseunendurable, and the office a nightmare; if in the daytime he longs for night, and at nightsighs for the light of day, then what he needs is not a new philosophy but a new regimen —adifferent diet, or more exercise, or what not. Man is an animal, and his happiness depends onhis physiology more than he likes to think. This is a humble conclusion, but I cannot makemyself disbelieve it. Unhappy businessmen, I am convinced,would increase their happinessmore by walking six miles every day than by any conceivable change of philosophy.

　　The 50-Percent Theory of Life

　　I believe in the 50-percent theory. Half the time things are better than normal; the other half, they are worse. I believe life is a pendulum swing. It takes time and experience to understand what normal is, and that gives me the perspective to deal with the surprises of the future. Let’s benchmark the parameters: Yes, I will die. I’ve dealt with the deaths of both parents, a best friend, a beloved boss and cherished pets. Some of these deaths have been violent, before my eyes, or slow and agonizing. Bad stuff, and it belongs at the bottom of the scale. Then there are those high points: romance and marriage to the right person; having a child and doing those Dad things like coaching my son’s baseball team, paddling around the creek in the boat while he’s swimming with the dogs; discovering his compassion so deep it manifests even in his kindness to snails, his imagination so vivid he builds a spaceship from a scattered pile of Legos. But there is a vast meadow of life in the middle, where the bad and the good flip-flop acrobatically. This is what convinces me to believe in the 50-percent theory. One spring I planted corn too early in a bottomland so flood-prone that neighbors laughed. I felt chagrined at the wasted effort. Summer turned brutal—the worst heat wave and drought in my lifetime. The air-conditioner died, the well went dry, the marriage ended, the job lost, the money gone. I was living lyrics from a country tune—music I loathed. Only a surging Kansas City Royals team, bound for their first World Series, buoyed my spirits. Looking back on that horrible summer, I soon understood that all succeeding good things merely offset the bad. Worse than normal wouldn’t last long. I am owed and savor the halcyon times. They reinvigorate me for the next nasty surprise and offer assurance that I can thrive. The 50-percent theory even helps me see hope beyond my Royals’ recent slump, a field of struggling rookies sown so that some year soon we can reap an October harvest.