優美經典英語散文欣賞

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　　優美經典英語散文：無知常樂

　　不得不說我就屬於此文章中的平常人，對於身邊的很多東西失去了當初孩子般的好奇心和熱情，也把很多東西看成了是自然之事，而其實這種情況下，心裡漸漸失去了融入生活的樂趣。我想這是我需要改變的地方，那麼你呢?是否還擁有一顆好奇的心呢?

　　The average man who uses a telephone could not explain how a telephone works. He takes for granted the telephone, the railway train, the linotype, the airplane, as our grandfathers took for granted the miracles of the gospels. He neither questions nor understands them. It is as though each of us investigated and made his own only a tiny circle of facts. Knowledge outside the day's work is regarded by most men as a gewgaw.

　　平常人只會使用電話，卻不能解釋電話的工作原理。他把電話、火車、整行鑄造排字機、飛機都看做是自然之事，就像我們的祖父一代聽慣了福音讚美書裡的奇蹟一樣。關於這些事，他既不去了解，也不去懷疑。就像我們每個人只對自己很小圈子裡的事才去調查，去認知。一切日常工作之外的知識，卻被我們看做是華而不實的玩意兒。

　　Still we are constantly in reaction against our ignorance. We rouse ourselves at interval and speculate. We revel in speculations about anything at all-about life after death or about such questions as that which is said to have puzzled Aristoles, "why sneezing from noon to midnight was good, but from night to noon unlucky." One of the greatest joys known to man is to take such a flight into ignorance in search, of knowledge. The great pleasure of ignorance is, after all, the pleasure of asking questions. The man who has lost this pleasure or exchanged it for the pleasure of dogma, which is the pleasure of answering, is already beginning to stiffen.

　　然而，對於我們的無知，我們還是經常地抗拒。我們偶爾振奮一次，進行一下思索推測。我們對一切東西進行思考，甚至著迷——關於人死後的生活，或者關於一些據說亞里士多德也弄不明白的疑惑，例如：“為什麼打噴嚏，為什麼從子夜到中午則凶，從中午到子夜則好?”人生最大的快樂之一，就是為追求知識而陷入無知。而無知的極大樂趣，歸根結底，就是不斷提出問題的樂趣。一個人，如果喪失了這個樂趣，或把自己的樂趣隱藏於把它換成教條的東西，那他的頭腦就已經開始僵化。

　　One envies so inquisitive a man as Jewell, who sat down to the study of physiology in his sixties. Most of us have lost the sense of our ignorance long before that age. We even become vain of our squirrel's hoard of knowledge and regard increasing age itself as a school of omniscience. We forget that Socrates was famed for wisdom not because he was omniscient but because he realized at the age of seventy that he still knew nothing.

　　我們羨慕像Jewell這樣的人，他勤學好問，到了六十多歲還能坐下來去研究生理學的東西。大多數人，不到他這麼大的年齡，對自己的無知感就早已喪失。甚至，我們會對自己有一點淺薄的知識而感到沾沾自喜，甚至覺得，流逝的光陰本身就能傳授給我們無所不有的知識。但是我們卻忘記了：Socrates之所以以明智名垂千史，並不是因為他無所不知，卻是因為他到了七十歲還能意識到，自己仍舊一無所知。

　　優美經典英語散文：生活之路

　　人可以追求可以選擇自己喜歡的生活方式，卻無法摒棄生活的本質。不論貧困與富足、權貴與卑微，都不過是人們根據自己的心態和能力為生活新增的調味劑。

　　The lives of most men are determined by their environment. They accept the circumstances amid which fate has thrown them not only resignation but even with good will. They are like streetcars running contentedly on their rails and they despise the sprightly flitter that dashes in and out of the traffic and speeds so jauntily across the open country. I respect them; they are good citizens, good husbands, and good fathers, and of course somebody has to pay the taxes; but I do not find them exciting.

　　大多數人的生活被他們身處的環境所決定。他們不僅接受既定的命運，而且順從命運的安排。他們就像街上的有軌電車一樣，在他們既定的軌道上行駛，而對於那些不時出沒於車水馬龍間和歡快地賓士在曠野上的廉價小汽車卻不屑一顧。我尊重他們，他們是好市民、好丈夫和好父親。當然，總得有些人來支付稅收，但是，他們並沒有令人激動的地方。

　　I am fascinated by the men, few enough in all conscience, who take life in their own hands and seem to mould it in to their own liking. It may be that we have no such thing as free will, but at all events, we have the illusion of it. At a cross-road it does seem to us that we might go either to the right or to the left and, the choice once made, it is difficult to see that the whole course of the world's history obliged us to take the turning we did.

　　另外有一些人，他把生活掌握在自己的手裡，可以按照自己的喜好去創造生活，儘管這樣的人少之又少，但我卻被他們深深地吸引著。可能世界上並沒有諸如自由意志這樣的事情，但是無論怎樣，我們總有關於自由意志的幻想。當我們處在一個十字路口時，我們似乎可以決定向左走還是向右走，可是一旦做出選擇，我們卻很難意識到，實際上是世界歷史的全部程序強迫我們做出了那樣的選擇。