经典英语美文阅读赏析

英语的学习很写作是很多人头大的问题，小编今天就给大家整理了英语美文欣赏，快点行动起来吧

　　倾听先人的声音

I believe we are not alone.

我相信我们并不孤单。

Even if I am on the other side of the world from the farmhouse I live in, I still dream of the ancient vines out the window, and the shed out back that my grandfather’s father built in 1870 with eucalyptus trunks. As long as I can recreate these images, I never quite leave home.

即使我处身地球的另一端，远离我家农庄，我仍然能梦见窗外那古老的藤蔓，梦见我爷爷的父亲在1870年用桉树建造的棚屋。只要这些影像还在我脑中浮现，我就离家不远。

I don’t think farming in the same place for six generations is a dead weight that keeps you shackled, doing the identical thing year in and year out. Instead, it is a rare link to others before me, who pruned the same vines and painted the same barn that I have. If those in this house survived the Panic of 1893 or the Great Depression, or bathed with cold water and used an outhouse, then surely I know I can weather high gas prices.

我不认为六代人在同一地方过着耕种的生活，年复一年地干着同样的活是一种让人喘不过气来的负担。相反，我与这些先人修剪着相同的藤蔓、给同一座谷仓上漆，这是我与他们之间难得的纽带。如果在这间屋子里住过的人能够挺过1893年的金融恐慌或是经济大萧条，能够忍受冷水浴、户外厕所，那么我也肯定能够应付攀升的汽油价格。

I believe that all of us need some grounding in our modern world of constant moving, buying, selling, meeting and leaving. Some find constancy in religion. Others lean on friends or community for permanence. But we need some daily signposts that we are not novel, not better, not worse from those who came before us.

我相信在这个现代社会，在不停的迁移、买卖、相聚、分离的生活中，所有人都需要一些寄托。一些人寄情于宗教，另一些人依赖于朋友或社区来寻求安稳，但我们还需要一些日常的标志物提醒我们：我们也和前人一样，并没有更新潮、更好或更糟。

For me, this house, this farm, these ancient vines are those roots. Although I came into this world alone and will leave alone, I am not alone.

对我来说，这房子、这农庄、这些古老的藤蔓，都是我生活的根基。虽然我孤独地来到这个世界，也将独自离去，但我并不孤单。

There are ghosts of dozens of conversations in the hallways, stories I remember about buying new plows that now rust in the barnyard and ruined crops from the same vines that we are now harvesting.

在屋里的门廊里回荡着许多旧时的对话，提到一些我记忆犹新的往事，如购买新新的犁头——如今已锈蚀在场院中，还有那曾被毁坏的作物，而我们现正在同一个藤架上获得收成。

I believe all of us are natural links in a long chain of being: I need to know what time of day it is, what season is coming, whether the wind is blowing north or from the east, and if the moon is still full tomorrow night, just as the farmers who came before me did.

我相信我们与前人都是人类长长纽带上的不同环节。与以前的农民一样，我需要知道现在是一天里的什么时间，接下来是什么季节，会吹南方还是东风，明晚的月亮是否还是圆的。

The physical world around us changes constantly; human nature does not. We must struggle in our brief existence to find some transcendent meaning during reoccurring heartbreak and disappointment and so find solace in the knowledge that our ancestors have all gone through this before.

我们周围的现实世界在不断地改变，但人类的本性不会变。在短暂的一生中，忧伤及失望会不断出现，我们必须努力找出超越现实的意义，要认识到我们的祖先都经历过了这些生活坎坷，从而得到心灵的慰藉。

You may find all that too intrusive, living with the past as present. I find it exhilarating. I believe there is an old answer for every new problem, that wise whispers of the past are with us to assure us that if we just listen and remember, we are not alone; we have been here before.

你或者会觉得生活中有先人的介入太难接受，但我却发现这很令人振奋。我相信每个新问题都有传统的答案，前人充满智慧的肺腑之言无处不在，只要我们能用心倾听、铭记，我们就不会孤单，因为我们以前也曾有过相同的经历。

　　宽容之心

It is curious that our own offenses should seem so much less heinous than the offenses of others. I suppose the reason is that we know all the circumstances that have occasioned them and so manage to excuse in ourselves what we cannot excuse in others. We turn our attention away from our own defects, and when we are forced by untoward events to consider them, find it easy to condone them. For all I know we are right to do this; they are part of us and we must accept the good and bad in ourselves together.

让人奇怪的是，和别人的过错比起来，我们自身的过错往往不是那样的可恶。我认为，其原因应该是我们知晓一切导致自己犯错的情况，因此能够设法谅解自己的错误，而别人的错误却不能谅解。我们对自己的缺点不甚关注，即便是深陷困境而不得不正视它们的时候，我们也会很容易就宽恕自己。据我所知，我们这样做是正确的。缺点是我们自身的一部分，我们必须接纳自己的好和坏。

But when we come to judge others, it is not by ourselves as we really are that we judge hem, but by an image that we have formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything that offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world. To take a trivial stance: how scornful we are when we catch someone out telling a lie; but who can say that he has ever told not one, but a hundred?

但是当我们评判别人的时候，情况就不同了。我们不是通过真实的自我来评判别人，而是用一种自我形象来评判，这种自我形象完全摒弃了在任何世人眼中会伤害到自己的虚荣或者体面的东西。举一个小例子来说：当觉察到别人说谎时，我们是多么地蔑视他啊!但是，谁能够说自从未说过谎?可能还不止一百次呢。

There is not much to choose between men. They are all a hotchpotch of greatness and tininess, of virtue and vice, of nobility and baseness. Some have more strength of character, or more opportunity, and so in one direction or another give their instincts freer play, but initially they are the same. For my part, I do not think I am any better or any worse than most people, but I know that if I set down every action in my life and every thought that has crossed my mind, the world would consider me a monster of depravity. The knowledge that these reveries are common to all men should inspire one with tolerance to oneself as well as to others. It is well also if they enable us to look upon our fellows, even the most eminent and respectable, with humor, and if they lead us to take ourselves not too seriously.

人和人之间没什么大的差别。他们皆是伟大与渺小，善良与*，高尚与低俗的混合体。有的人性格比较坚毅，机会也比较多，因而这个或那个方面，能够更自由地发挥自己的禀赋，但是人类的潜能却都是相同的。至于我自己，我认为自己并不比大多数人更好或者更差，但是我知道，假如我记下我生命中每一次举动和每一个掠过我脑海的想法的话，世界就会将我视为一个*的怪物。每个人都会有这样的怪念头，这样的认识应当能够启发我们宽容自己，也宽容他人。同时，假如因此我们得以用幽默的态度看待他人，即使是天下秀最令人尊敬的人，而且假如我们也因此不把自己看得过于重要，那是很有裨益的。

　　阅读好书

Reading Good Books

Devote some of your leisure, I repeat, to cultivating a love of reading good books. Fortunate indeed are those who contrive to make themselves genuine book-lovers. For book- lovers have some noteworthy advantages over other people. They need never know lonely hours so long as they have books around them, and the better the books the more delightful the company. From good books, moreover, they draw much besides entertainment. They gain mental food such as few companions can supply. Even while resting from their labors they are, through the books they read, equipping themselves to perform those labors more efficiently. This albeit~ they may not be deliberately reading to improve their mind. All unconsciously the ideas they derive from the printed pages are stored up, to be worked over by the imagination for their future profit.

[参考译文]

阅读好书

我再说一遍，把你的一部分空闲时光用来培养阅读好书的爱好吧。那些设法把自己培养成为真正爱好读书的人，确实是幸运的。因为爱读书的人比之别人有着明显的好处。只要手头有书，他们就从来不知寂寞。书越好，读来越是津津有味。他们从好书中不但得到乐趣，而且受到很多教益。他们从中获得的那种精神食粮，从其他地方是很难得到的。即使是在工作休息时，通过读书，他们的工作效率也能更加提高，尽管他们未必有意识地想到读书是为了提高才智。在全然不知不觉中，他们从书中吸取的知识积累起来，经过想想象力的加工，对将来大有用处。