英語背誦美文
在小學課堂教學中,通過課前誦讀、課中嵌入、課後運用經典美文,能有效提升學生英語素養,增強文化底蘊,優化語文課堂,讓課堂煥發出生命的活力。下面小編整理了，希望大家喜歡!
：藝術與生命Art and Life
My parents owned six books between them. Two of those were Bibles and the third was a concordance to the Old and New Testaments. The fourth was The House At Pooh Corner. The fifth，The Chatterbox Annual 1923 and the sixth, Malory’s Morte d’Artliur.
我父母兩人共有六本書。其中兩本是聖經、第三本是新舊約用語索引、第四本是《噗噗熊街角的屋子》***The House at Pooh Corner***、第五本是《1923年話匣子年鑑》***The Chatterbox 1923 Annual***，而第六本是馬洛禮***Malory***的《阿瑟王之死》***Mortd’Arthur***。
I found it necessary to smuggle books in and of the house and I cannot claim too much for the provision of an outside toilet when there is no room of one’s own. It was on the toilet that I first read Freud and D. H. Lawrence, and perhaps that was the best place, after all. We kept a rubber torch hung on the cistern, and I had to divide my money from a Saturday job, between buying books and buying batteries. My mother knew exactly how long her Ever Readys would last if used only to illuminate the hap that separated the toilet paper from its function.
我發現有必要把書偷運進出家裡，而且沒有屬於自己的房間時，對於於屋外廁所的供應品，我不能要求太多。我第一次讀到弗洛依德和D. H. 勞倫斯，是坐在馬桶上的，而或許，那終究是最佳之處。我們在馬桶水箱上懸吊了一個橡膠手電筒，而我必須將週六那份工作賺來的錢，平分花在買書和買電池上面。我母親清楚知道，她那些永備牌電池，如果光是用來照明區分衛生紙和其功能的空隙，可以維持多久。
Once I had tucked the book back down my knickers to get it indoors again, I find somewhere to hide it, and anyone with a single bed, standard size, and paperbacks, standard size, will discover that seventy seven can be accommodated per layer under the mattress. But as my collection grew, I began to worry that my mother might notice that her daughter’s bed was rising visibly. One day she did. She burned everything.
有一回我又把書塞在內褲裡，好帶進屋裡。我必須找個地方把書藏起來，而任何人，若擁有一張單人床，標準尺寸的，以及平裝書籍，標準尺寸的，就會發現，床墊底下每一層可容納七十七本。可是當我的收集品增加時，便開始擔心母親會注意到，用眼睛就看得出女兒的床正逐漸升高。有一天她真的發現了。她全給燒了…。
I had been brought up to memorize very long Bible passages, and when I left home and was supporting myself so that I could continue my education, I fought off loneliness and fear by reciting. In the funeral parlor I whispered Donne to the embalming fluids and Marvell to the corpses. Later, I found that Tennyson’ s ‘Lady of Shalott’ had a soothing, because rhythmic, effect on the mentally disturbed. Among the disturbed I numbered myself at that time.
……我成長過程中，必須背下很長的聖經段落。到我離開家庭，自己賺錢以便繼續求學時，便靠背誦來抵擋寂寞和恐懼。在殯儀館裡，我稍稍對著防腐香料液念約翰 ?多恩***Donne***、對著屍體念安德魯?馬維爾***Marvel***。後來，我發現丁尼生***Tennyson***的〈夏洛特〉***“Lady of Shalott”***，因為有節焰感，對於心智失衡者具有一種安撫作用。在那個時候我把自己也算在失衡者之列。
The healing power of art is not a rhetorical fantasy. Fighting to keep language, language became my sanity and my strength. It still is, and I know of no pain that art cannot assuage. For some, music, for some, pictures, for me, primarily, poetry, whether found in poems or in prose, cuts through noise and hurt, opens the wound to clean it, and then gradually teaches it to heal itself. Wounds need to be taught to heal themselves.
藝術的療愈力量並非誇大其詞的幻想。我奮力留住語言，語言因而讓我心智正常，具有力量。到現在仍是如此，而且我所知道的痛苦，無一不透過藝術而得到舒緩。對某此人來說，是音樂，另一些人，是繪畫，對我來說，是主要的是，不論出現在詩歌或散文中，詩能夠切穿嘈雜和傷痛，將傷口開啟以清理之，然後逐漸教導它自我療愈。
The psyche and the spirit do not share the instinct of damaged body. Healing is automatically triggered nor is danger usually avoided. Since we put ourselves in the way of hurt it seems logical to put ourselves in the way of healing. Art has more work to do than ever before but it can do that work. In a self-destructive society like our own, it is unsurprising that art as a healing force is despised.
心靈和精神不像受損了的身體具有一種本能。療愈不會自動給引發，而危險也通常無以避免。既然我們會讓自己受傷，那麼讓自己得到療愈也是合乎邏輯的。比起以往任何時候，藝術要做更多的工作，但是這份工作它是做得來的。像我們這樣一個自我毀滅的社會裡，藝術之為一種療愈的力量，會受到鄙視，並不令人感到訝異。
For myself, when I returned to my to my borrowed room night after night, and there were my books, I felt relief and exuberance, not hardship and exhaustion. I intended to avoid the fate of Jude the Obscure, although a reading of that book was a useful warning. What I wanted did not belong to me by right and whilst it could not be refused tome in quite same way, we still have subtle punishments for anyone who insists on what they are and what they want. Walled inside the little space marked out for by family and class, it was the limitless world of imagination that it possible for me to scale the sheer face of other people’s assumptions. Inside books there is perfect space and it is that space which allows the reader to escape from the problems of gravity.
對我自己而言，夜復一夜回到借來的房裡時，我感到放心且滿溢，而非困苦和疲憊，我意圖避免《無名裘德》***Jude the Obscure***的命運，雖然閱讀那本書是很有用的警告。我所想要的，並不理當屬於我，而雖然它也不能以完全同樣的方式拒我於外，但是任何人若堅持要做某種人或是想要某些東西，我們仍然會給他很微妙的懲罰。當我被關在家庭和階級為我所劃定的小小空間裡，是想象力那片無限的天地，讓我得以刮除他人那些假設的表層。書中自有完美的空間，就是這個空間，讓讀者能夠逃避地心引力的諸般問題。
：生活的藝術The art of living
The art of living is to know when to hold fast and when to let go. For life is a paradox: it enjoins us to cling to its many gifts even while it ordains their eventual relinquishment. The rabbis of old put it this way:" A man comes to this world with his fist clenched, but when he dies, his hand is open."
生活的妙訣在於懂得何時抓緊，何時放鬆。因為人生就是個悖論:它讓我們抓緊人生的多種恩賜，同時又要我們到頭來把這些賜予放棄。老一輩猶太學者是這樣說的:“一個人握緊拳頭來到這個世界，但離開這世界時卻是攤開手掌的。”
Surely we ought to hold fast to life, for it is wondrous, and full of a beauty that breaks through every pore of God' s own earth. We know that this is so, but all too often we recognize this truth only in our backward glance when we remember what was and then suddenly realize that it is no more. /p>
毫無疑問，我們應該牢牢抓住生命，因為它奇妙。它有一種在上帝創造的世界裡無孔不人、無處不在的美。我們大家都知道這一點，可我們卻常常是在回首往事想起它時，才能認識到這一真理。此時我們會突然發覺它已不復存在了。
We remember a beauty that faded, a love that waned. But we remember with far greater pain that we did not see that beauty when it flowered, that we failed to respond with love when it was tendered.
我們能記起已經凋謝的美，已經消逝的愛。可是，我們更痛苦的回憶是，我們沒有在鮮花怒放之際看見那種美.沒有在別人以愛對我之時也以愛回報。
A recent experience re-taught me this truth. I was hospitalized following a severe heart attack and had been in intensive care for several days. It was not a pleasant place.
最近一次經歷又使我領悟到這個真理。一場劇烈的心臟病發作後我被送進醫院。接受幾天的精心護理。醫院可不是個令人偷快的地方。
One morning, I had to have some additional tests. The required machines were located in a building at the opposite end of the hospital, so I had to be wheeled across the courtyard on a gurney.
一天上午，我得加做另外幾項檢查。我要用的醫療器械安裝在醫院另一端的大樓裡。所以我只有躺在輪床上由人推著穿過院子才能到達那裡。
As we emerged from our unit, the sunlight hit me. That's all there was to my experience. Just the light of the sun. And yet how beautiful it was -- how warming, how sparking, how brilliant! I looked to see whether anyone else relished the sun's golden glow, but everyone was hurrying to and fro, most with eyes fixed on the ground. Then I remembered how often I, too, had been indifferent to the grandeur of each day, too preoccupied with petty and sometimes even mean concerns to respond from that experience is really as commonplace as was the experience itself: life's gifts are precious -- but we are too heedless of them.
當我們走出病房時，陽光正照在我身上。當時也沒有什麼別的，只不過就是這陽光。而這時的陽光多麼溫暖、多麼耀眼、多麼輝煌!我打量著別人是否也在欣賞這太陽的金色光芒。可是，人人都來去匆匆。大多數人的口光只盯在地上。這時我想到過去自己義何嘗不是對每天的壯觀景象視而不見，一頭埋在細小的、有時甚至是卑鄙、自私的事務中，而對日常的奇觀麻木不仁呢?從這次經歷所獲得的頓悟確如經歷本身一樣的平凡。生命的賜予是寶貴的，可惜我們對它們太掉以輕心了。
Here then is the first pole of life' s paradoxical demands on us : Never too busy for the wonder and the awe of life. Be reverent before each dawning day. Embrace each hour. Seize each golden minute.
這就是人生向我們提出的矛盾要求的第一個方面:不要因為太忙就忽視了生活中令人驚奇、令人敬畏的東西。每天黎明開始就要恭謹從事。抓緊每個小時，抓住寶貴的每分鐘。
Hold fast to life...but not so fast that you cannot let go. This is the second side of life' s coin, the opposite pole of its paradox: we must accept our losses, and learn how to let go.
緊緊抓住生活——可不要緊得使你不能鬆手。這就使生活的另，面一矛盾的另一方:我們必須接受損失，學會放鬆。
This is not an easy lesson to learn, especially when we are young and think that the world is ours to command, that whatever we desire with the full force of our passionate being can, nay, will, be ours. But then life moves along to confront us with realities, and slowly but surely this truth dawns upon us.
這並不是輕易就學到手的。特別是當我們年輕時，認為世界是麼但由我們掌握的，東西就能夠一隻要我們自己滿腔熱情，全力以赴地渴求，不管什不，一定會—得到，此時‘這一道理尤其難學。是，隨著生活的繼續前進。我們不斷地面臨各種現實，慢慢地但也是肯定地使我們明白了第二條真理。
At every stage of life we sustain losses -- and grow in the process. We begin our independent lives only when we emerge from the womb and lose its protective shelter. We enter a progression of schools, then we leave our mothers and fathers and our childhood homes. We get married and have children and then have to let them go. We confront the death of our parents and our spouses. We face the gradual or not so gradual waning of our strength. And ultimately, as the parable of the open and closed hand suggests, we must confront the inevitability of our own demise, losing ourselves as it were, all that we were or dreamed to be.
在生活的耳個階段卜，我們都要蒙受損失—但也是在這個過程中，我們得到成長。我們只有在脫離母胎、失去它的庇護時，才能開始獨立生活。我們要進各級學校，繼而告別父母，告別兒時的家。我們要結婚生子，繼而送走子女。我們要面對父母、配偶的死亡。我們要面臨體力或快或慢的消退。最終，正如鬆手與握拳的比喻那樣，我們自己也得走向不可抗拒的死亡，失去原有的自身，失去我們以往的或夢想過的一切。
：最低等的動物The lowest animal
Man is the only animal that robs his helpless fellow of his country-takes possession of it and drives him out of it or destroys him. Man has done this in all the ages. There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle after cycle, by force and bloodshed.
人是唯-一種搶奪無助同類國土的動物——佔有同類的國土，將其驅逐出境或者將其摧毀。人類代代從事著這種行徑。地球上沒有一寸土地屬於正當的主人，要麼就是迴圈反覆地通過燒殺搶奪、流血犧牲在不同的主人間易手。
Man is the only Slave. And he is the only animal who enslaves. He has always been a slave in one form or another, and has always held other slaves in bondage under him in one way or another. In our day he is always some man's slave for wages, and does the man's work; and this slave has other slaves under him for minor wages, and they do his work. The higher animals are the only ones who exclusively do their own work and provide their own living.
人是唯一的奴隸。人也是唯一奴役他人的動物。人總是以這種或者那種形式成為奴隸，義總是以這種或者那種方式把其他奴隸牢牢地掌控在手中。如今，人為了領工資而成為某個人的奴隸，為那個人做事;這個奴隸又擁有其他奴隸，並且支付更少的工資，讓他們替他幹活。高階動物是隻給自己於活、自謀生路的人。
Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people's countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man"-with his mouth.
人是唯一的愛國者。他在自己的國土.上傲然而立，號召維護國家，蔑視其他國家，支付重金進行大量的軍事暗殺活動，攫取其他國家的財產，防止他們搶奪本國財產。在一次次爭鬥的間歇，他洗掉沾滿雙手的鮮血，口口聲聲叫喊著“為廣大同胞”而戰。
Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion-several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven. He was at it in the time of Caesars, he was at it in Mahomet's time, he was at it in the time of the Inquisition, he was at it in France a couple of centuries, he was at it in England in Mary's day, he has been at it ever since he first saw the light, he is at it today in Crete-as per the telegrams quoted above*-he will be at it somewhere else tomorrow. The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out, in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.
人是信奉宗教的動物。人是唯一信奉宗教的動物。人是唯一擁有真正宗教的動物—有好幾種宗教。人是唯一愛鄰如己的動物，如果鄰居信仰邪門歪教，他會切斷鄰居的喉嚨。人竭盡全力地為兄弟開闢通往幸福和天堂的大道，從而已經使地球變為一片墳場。愷撒時代，人熱衷於此;穆罕默德時代，人熱衷於此;宗教法庭時代，人熱衷於此;幾個世紀以來，人在法國熱衷於此;在英國瑪麗女王時代，人熱衷於此;自從人第一次看見光明，人就熱衷於此，如今在克里特島。人熱衷於此—正如以上引用的侮則電報中提到的人將來在其他某個地方還會熱衷於此。高階動物不信仰宗教。有人告訴我們，今後人們會擯棄宗教。我不清楚其中緣由。看起來這值得懷疑。
Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal. Note his history, as sketched above. It seems plain to me that whatever he is he is not a reasoning animal. His record is the fantastic record of a maniac. I consider that the strongest count against his intelligence is the fact that with that record back of him he blandly sets himself up as the head animal of the lot: whereas by his own standards he is the bottom one.
人是理性的動物。原因如下。我認為可以開誠佈公地進行討論。的確，我的研究表明人是喪失理性的動物。注意以下幾提及的歷史。人是沒有理性的動物，在我看來乃尋常之事。人的記錄即是一個瘋子的荒誕記錄。大量記載顯示人把自己當作萬物之靈;然而，依照人自己的標準，人是最低階的，我認為這是反對人的智慧的最強有力的證據。
In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which the other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.
事實上，人愚蠢之極。不可救藥。其他動物輕易掌握的簡單之事，人卻無法學會。我的一項實驗就證明了這一點。我花了一個小時教一隻貓和一條狗交朋友，我把它們放在一個籠子中。我又花了一個小時教它們和一隻兔子、一隻松鼠和幾隻鴿子交朋友。最後。教它們和一隻猴子交朋友。它們和平相處，甚至情深意切。