英语四级美文

　　1、life is to be whole人生在于完整

英语四级美文

　　Once a circle missed a wedge. The circle wanted to be whole，so it went around looking for its missing piece．But because it was incomplete and therefore could roll only very slowly，it admired the flowers along the way．It chatted with worms．It enjoyed the sunshine．It found lots of different pieces，but none of them fit．So it left them all by the side of the road and kept on searching．Then one day the circle found a piece that fit perfectly．It was so happy．Now it could be whole，with nothing missing．It incorporated the missing piece into itself and began to roll．Now that it was a perfect circle，it could roll very fast，too fast to notice the flowers or talking to the worms．When it realized how different the world seemed when it rolled so quickly，it stopped，left its found piece by the side of the road and rolled slowly away．

　　The lesson of the story，I suggested，was that in some strange sense we are more whole when we are missing something．The man who has everything is in some ways a poor man．He will never know what it feels like to yearn，to hope，to nourish his soul with the dream of something better．He will never know the experience of having someone who loves him give him something he has always wanted or never had．

　　There is a wholeness about the person who has come to terms with his limitations，who has been brave enough to let go of his unrealistic dreams and not feel like a failure for doing so．There is a wholeness about the man or woman who has learned that he or she is strong enough to go through a tragedy and survive，who can lose someone and still feel like a complete person．

　　Life is not a trap set for us by God so that he can condemn us for failing．Life is not a spelling bee，where no matter how many words you've gotten right，you're disqualified if you make one mistake．Life is more like a baseball season，where even the best team loses one－third of its games and even the worst team has its days of brilliance．Our goal is to win more games than we lose．

　　When we accept that imperfection is part of being human，and when we can continue rolling through life and appreciate it，we will have achieved a wholeness that others can only aspire to．That，I believe，is what God asks of us－－not “Be perfect”，not “Don't even make a mistake”，but “Be whole．”

　　If we are brave enough to love，strong enough to forgive，generous enough to rejoice in another's happiness，and wise enough to know there is enough love to go around for us all，then we can achieve a fulfillment that no other living creature will ever know．

　　从前有一只圆圈缺了一块楔子。圆圈想保持完整，便四处寻找失去的那块楔子。由于它不完整，所以只能滚动很慢。一路上，它对花儿露出羡慕之色。它与蠕虫谈天侃地。它还欣赏到了阳光之美。圆圈找到了许许多多不同的配件，但是没有一件能完美地与它相配。所以，它将它们统统弃置路旁，继续寻觅。终于有一天，它找到了一个完美的配件。圆圈是那样地高兴，现在它可以说是完美无缺了。它装好配件，然后滚动起来。既然它已成了一个完整的圆圈，所以滚动得非常快，快得以至于无暇观赏花儿，也无暇与蠕虫倾诉心声。圆圈快奔急骋，发现眼中的世界变得如此不同，于是，它不禁停了下来，将找到的那个配件留在路旁，又开始了慢慢地滚动。

　　我觉得这个故事告诉我们，从某种奇妙意义上讲，当我们失去了一些东西时反而感到更加完整。一个拥有一切的人其实在某些方面是个穷人。他永远也体会不到什么是渴望、期待以及对美好梦想的感悟。他也永远不会有这样一种体验：一个爱他的人送给他某种他梦寐以求的或者从未拥有过的东西意味什么。

　　人生的完整性在于一个人知道如何面对他的缺陷，如何勇敢地摒弃那些不现实的幻想而又不以此为缺憾。人生的完整性还在于一个男人或女人懂得这样一个道理：他（她）发现自己能勇敢面对人生悲剧而继续生存，能够在失去亲人后依然表现出一个完整的人的风范。

　　人生不是上帝为谴责我们的缺陷而给我们布下的陷阱。人生也不是一场拼字游戏比赛。不管你拼出多少单词，一旦出现了一个错误，你便前功尽弃。人生更像是一个棒球赛季。即使最好的球队比赛也会输掉１／３，而最差的球队也有春风得意的日子。我们的目标就是多赢球，少输球。

　　我们接受了不完整性是人类本性的一部分，我们不断地进行人生滚动并能意识到其价值，我们就会完成完整人生的过程。而对于别人来讲，这只能是一个梦想。我相信这就是上帝对我们的要求：不求“完美”，也不求“永不犯错误”，而是求得人生的“完整”。

　　如果我们勇敢得能够去爱，坚强得能够去宽容，大度得能够去分享他人的幸福，明智得能够理解身边充满爱，那么我们就能取得别的生物所不能取得的成就。

　　2、Competition

　　It is a plain fact that we are in a world where competition is going on in all areas and at all levels.This is exciting.Yet, on the other hand, competition breeze a pragmatic attitude.People choose to learn things that are useful,and do things that are profitable.Todays' college education is also affected by this general sense of utilitarianism. Many college students choose business nor computing programming as their majors convinced that this professions are where the big money is. It is not unusual to see the college students taking a part time jobs as a warming up for the real battle.I often see my friends taking GRE tests, working on English or computer certificates and taking the driving licence to get a licence. Well, I have nothing against being practical. As the competition in the job market gets more and more intense, students do have reasons to be practical. However, we should never forget that college education is much more than skill training. Just imagine, if your utilitarianism is prevails on campus, living no space for the cultivation of students' minds,or nurturing of their soul. We will see university is training out well trained spiritless working machines.If utilitarianism prevails society, we will see people bond by mind-forged medicals lost in the money-making ventures;we will see humality lossing their grace and dignity, and that would be disastrous.I'd like to think society as a courage and people persumed for profit or fame as a horese that pulls the courage.Yet without the driver picking direction the courage would go straight and may even end out in a precarious situation .A certificate may give you some advantage, but broad horizons, positive attitudes and personal integrities ,these are assets you cannot acquire through any quick fixed way.In today's world, whether highest level of competition is not of skills or expertise , but vision and strategy. Your intellectual quality largely determinds how far you can go in your career.

　　3、Chinese Undergraduates in the US

　　Each year, elite American universities and liberal arts colleges, such as Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Amherst and Wellesley, offer a number of scholarships to Chinese high school graduates to study in their undergraduate programs. Four years ago, I received such a scholarship from Yale.

　　What are these Chinese undergrads like? Most come from middle-class families in the big urban centers of China. The geographical distribution is highly skewed, with Shanghai and Beijing heavily over-represented. Outside the main pool, a number of Yale students come from Changsha and Ningbo,swhereseach year American Yale graduates are sent to teach English.

　　The overwhelming majority of Chinese undergraduates in the US major in science, engineering or economics. Many were academic superstars in their high schools - gold medallists in international academic Olympiads or prize winners in national academic contests. Once on US campuses, many of them decide to make research a lifelong commitment.

　　Life outside the classroom constitutes an important part of college life. At American universities the average student spends less than thirteen hours a week in class. Many Chinese students use their spare time to pick up some extra pocket money. At Yale, one of the most common campus jobs is washing dishes in the dining halls. Virtually all Chinese undergraduates at Yale work part-time in the dining halls at some point in their college years. As they grow in age and sophistication, they upgrade to better-paying and less stressful positions. The more popular and interesting jobs include working as a computer assistant, math homework grader, investment office assistant and lab or research assistant. The latter three often lead to stimulating summer jobs.

　　Student activities are another prominent feature of American college life. Each week there are countless student-organized events of all sorts - athletic, artistic, cultural, political or social (i.e. just for fun). New student organizations are constantly being created, and Chinese undergrads contribute to this ferment. Sport looms much larger on US campuses than in China. At Yale, intramural sports from soccer to water polo take place all year long; hence athletic talent is a real social asset. One of the Chinese students at Yale several years ago was a versatile sportsman. His athletic talents and enthusiastic participation in sporting events, combined with his other fine qualities, made him a popular figure in his residential college.

　　4、I Want to Know

　　It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

　　It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

　　It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!

　　It doesn’t interest me if the story you’re telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy.

　　It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.

　　It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

　　It doesn’t interest me who you are, how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

　　I want to know if you can sit with pain, without moving to hide it

　　I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.

　　I want to know if you can see beauty , if you can source your life from god’s presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

　　5、Beauty

　　there were a sensitivity and a beauty to her that have nothing to do with looks. She was one to be listened to, whose words were so easy to take to heart.

　　I have thought about her often over the years and how she struggled in a society that places an incredible premium on looks, class, wealth and all the other fineries of life. She suffered from a disfigurement that cannot be made to look attractive. I know that her condition hurt her deeply.

　　Would her life have been different had she been pretty? Chances are it would have. And yet there were a sensitivity and a beauty to her that had nothing to do with looks. She was one to be listened to, whose words were so easy to take to heart. Her words came from a wounded but loving heart, very much like all hearts, but she had more of a need to be aware of it, to live with it and learn from it. She possessed a fine-tuned sense of beauty. Her only fear in life was the loss of a friend.

　　It is said that the true nature of being is veiled. The labor of words, the expression of art, the seemingly ceaseless buzz that is human thought all have in common the need to get at what really is so. The hope to draw close to and possess the truth of being can be a feverish one. In some cases it can even be fatal, if pleasure is one's truth and its attainment more important than life itself. In other lives, though, the search for what is truthful gives life.

　　The truth of her life was a desire to see beyond the surface for a glimpse of what it is that matters. She found beauty and grace and they befriended her, and showed her what is real.

　　6、Work and Pleasure

　　To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real. It is no use starting late in life to say: “I will take an interest in this or that.” Such an attempt only aggravates the strain of mental effort. A man may acquire great knowledge of topics unconnected with his daily work, and yet hardly get any benefit or relief. It is no use doing what you like; you have got to like what you do. Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: those who are toiled to death, those who are worried to death, and those who are bored to death. It is no use offering the manual labourer, tired out with a hard week’s sweat and effort, the chance of playing a game of football or baseball on Saturday afternoon. It is no use inviting the politician or the professional or business man, who has been working or worrying about serious things for six days, to work or worry about trifling things at the weekend.

　　It may also be said that rational, industrious useful human beings are divided into two classes: first, those whose work is work and whose pleasure is pleasure; and secondly, those whose work and pleasure are one. Of these the former are the majority. They have their compensations. The long hours in the office or the factory bring with them as their reward, not only the means of sustenance, but a keen appetite for pleasure even in its simplest and most modest forms. But Fortune’s favoured children belong to the second class. Their life is a natural harmony. For them the working hours are never long enough. Each day is a holiday, and ordinary holidays when they come are grudged as enforced interruptions in an absorbing vocation. Yet to both classes the need of an alternative outlook, of a change of atmosphere, of a diversion of effort, is essential. Indeed, it may well be that those whose work is their pleasure are those who most need the means of banishing it at intervals from their minds.

　　工作和娱乐

　　要想获得真正的快乐与安宁，一个人应该有至少两三种爱好，而且必须是真正的爱好。到晚年才说“我对什么什么有兴趣”是没用的，这只会徒然增添精神负担。一个人可以在自己工作之外的领域获得渊博的知识，不过他可能几乎得不到什么好处或是消遣。做你喜欢的事是没用的，你必须喜欢你所做的事。总的来说，人可以分为三种：劳累而死的、忧虑而死的、和烦恼而死的。对于那些体力劳动者来说，经历了一周精疲力竭的体力劳作，周六下午让他们去踢足球或者打棒球是没有意义的。而对那些政治家、专业人士或者商人来说，他们已经为严肃的事情操劳或烦恼六天了，周末再让他们为琐事劳神也是没有意义的。

　　也可以说，那些理性的、勤勉的、有价值的人们可分为两类，一类，他们的.工作就是工作，娱乐就是娱乐；而另一类，他们的工作即娱乐。大多数人属于前者，他们得到了相应的补偿。长时间在办公室或工厂里的工作，回报给他们的不仅是维持了生计，还有一种强烈的对娱乐的需求，哪怕是最简单的、最朴实的娱乐。不过，命运的宠儿则属于后者。他们的生活很自然和谐。对他们来说，工作时间永远不嫌长。每天都是假日，而当正常的假日来临时，他们总是埋怨自己所全身心投入的休假被强行中断了。不过，有些事情对两类人是同样至关重要的，那就是转换一下视角、改变一下氛围、将精力转移到别的事情上。确实，对那些工作即是娱乐的人来说，最需要隔一段时间就用某种方式把工作从脑子里面赶出去。

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