自考英语综合二下册课文 lesson 1

　　[00:00.00]Lesson One  Text

[00:05.09]Courtesy: Key to a Happier World Dr.Norman Vincent Peak

[00:14.24]Many years ago trying to help people with every kind of trouble

[00:21.08]left me with one sure conviction:

[00:25.65]in case after case the difficulty could have been overcome

[00:32.10]or might never have arisen

[00:35.55]if the people involved had just treated one another with common courtesy.

[00:43.21]Courtesy, politeness,good manners call it what you will,

[00:50.86]the supply never seems to equal the demand.

[00:56.50]"It's not so much what my husband says,"a tearful wife confides 1,

[01:03.58]"as the way he says it.Why does he have to yell at me?"

[01:10.24]"I hate my boss," a grim-faced office worker mutters.

[01:16.77]"He never shows appreciation 2 for anything."

[01:21.74]"All we get from our teenagers,"

[01:25.79]a worried parent says," is a moody 3 sullenness 4."

[01:33.15]Such complaints are not limited to people who sit in my study.

[01:39.79]Human beings every where hunger for courtesy.

[01:45.35]"Good manners," said Ralph Waldo Emerson,

[01:50.68]"are the happy way of doing things."

[01:54.81]And the reverse is equally true.

[01:58.78]Bad manners can ruin a day or wreck 5 a friendship.

[02:04.73]What are the basic ingredients of good manners?

[02:09.70]Certainly a strong sense of justice is one;

[02:15.65]courtesy is often nothing more than a highly developed sense of fair play.

[02:22.81]A friend once told me of driving along a one lane,unpaved mountain road.

[02:30.96]Ahead was another car that produced clouds of choking dust,

[02:37.62]and it was a long way to the nearest paved highway.

[02:43.08]Suddenly, at a wider place,the car ahead pulled off the road.

[02:49.85]Thinking that its owner might have engine trouble,

[02:54.71]my friend stopped and asked if anything was wrong.

[02:59.98]"No, " said the other driver.

[03:03.82]"But you've endured my dust this far;

[03:08.47]I'll put up with yours the rest of the way.

[03:12.91]"There was a man with manners, and an innate 6 sense of fair play.

[03:19.76]Another ingredient of courtesy is empathy,

[03:24.90]a quality that enables a person to see into the mind or heart of someone else,

[03:33.68]to understand the pain or unhappiness there and to do something to minimize it.

[03:42.93]Recently in a book about a famous restaurant chain

[03:48.39]I came across such an episode

[03:52.54]A man dining alone was trying to unscrew the cap of a bottle of catsup

[04:00.90]but his fingers were so badly crippled by arthritis 7 that he couldn't do it.

[04:08.66]He asked a young busboy to help him.

[04:13.41]The boy took the bottle,

[04:16.57]turned his back momentarily and loosened the cap without difficulty.

[04:24.23]Then he tightened 8 it again.

[04:27.86]Turning back to the man,

[04:31.10]he feigned 9 a great effort to open the bottle without success.

[04:37.16]Finally he took it into the kitchen and returned shortly,

[04:43.61]saying that he had managed to loosen it but only with a pair of pliers.

[04:51.47]What impelled 10 the boy to take so much trouble

[04:56.52]to spare the feelings of a stranger Courtesy,compassionate courtesy.

[05:04.88]Yet another component 11 of politeness is the capacity to treat all people alike,

[05:13.13]regardless of all status or importance.

[05:18.17]Even when you have doubts about some people,

[05:22.43]act as if they are worthy 12 of your best manners.

[05:28.18]You may also be astonished to find out that they really are.

[05:34.55]I truly believe that anyone can improve his or her manners by doing three things.

[05:42.80]First, by practicing courtesy.

[05:47.77]All skills require constant repetition to become second nature;

[05:54.72]good manners are no exception.

[05:58.79]One simple way is to concentrate on your performance

[06:04.15]in a specific areafor about a week.

[06:09.40]Telephone manner,for example.

[06:13.16]How often do you talk too long, speak abruptly 13,

[06:19.51]fail to identify yourself,keep people waiting,

[06:25.67]display impatience 14 with the operator or fail to return a call?

[06:32.65]Or driving a car,why not watch yourself sternly for aggressive driving,

　　[06:40.80]unnecessary hornblowing, following too closely,

[06:47.07]failing to yield the right-of-the-way?

[06:51.61]One difficult but essential thing to remember

[06:56.29]is to refuse to letother people's bad manners

[07:01.43]goad you into retaliating 15 in kind.

[07:05.98]I recall a story told by a young man

[07:10.84]who was in a car with his father one night

[07:15.20]when a driver in an oncoming vehicle failed to dim his lights.

[07:22.96]"Give him the brights.Dad!" the young man urged in exasperation 16.

[07:29.72]"Son," replied the father, "

[07:33.98]that driver is certainly discourteous 17 and probably stupid.

[07:39.94]But if I give him the brights he'll be discourteous,stupid and blind

[07:47.70]and that's a combination I don't want to tangle 19 with!

[07:52.84]The second requirement for improving your manners is to think in a courteous 18 way.

[07:59.97]In the long run, the kind of person you are

[08:05.15]is the result of what you've been thinking over the past twenty or thirty years.

[08:13.98]If your thoughts are predominantly self directed,

[08:19.30]a discourteous person is what you will be.

[08:24.16]If on the other hand you train your self to be considerate of others,

[08:31.82]if you can acquire the habit of identifying with their problems

[08:37.77]and hopes and fears,good manners will follow almost automatically.

[08:45.64]Nowhere is thinking courtesy more important than in marriage.

[08:51.88]In the intimacy 20 of the home it is easy to displace disappoint ment

[08:59.25]or frustration 21 or anger onto the nearest person,

[09:05.59]and that person is often a husband or wife.

[09:10.74]"When you feel your anger getting out of control,

[09:15.89]"I have often said to married couples,"

[09:19.96]force yourself for the next ten minutes to treat your married partner

[09:27.69]as if he or she were a guest in your home.

[09:32.84]I knew that if they could impose just ten minutes of good manners on themselves,

[09:40.41]the worst of the storm would blow over.

[09:45.06]Finally, to have good manners you must be able to accept courtesy,receive it gladly,

[09:52.72]rejoice when it comes your way.

[09:56.87]Strangely, some people are suspicious of gracious treatment.

[10:02.62]They suspect the other person of having some ulterior motive 22.

[10:09.38]But some of the most precious gifts in life come with no strings 23 attached.

[10:16.62]You can't achieve a beautiful day through any effort on your part.

[10:23.15]You can't buy a sunset or even the scent 24 of a rose.

[10:29.42]Those are the world's courtesies to us,

[10:34.28]offered with love and without thought of reward or return.

[10:36.32]Good manners are, or should be, like that.

[10:41.28]In the end,it all comes down to how you regard people

[10:47.34]not just people in general but individuals.

[10:53.40]Life is full of minor 25 irritations 26 and trials and injustices 27

[10:59.96]The only constant,daily,effective solution is politeness

[11:07.40]which is the golden rule in action.

[11:11.53]I think that if I were allowed to add one small beatitudeas

[11:18.61]a footnote to the other it might be:Blessed are the courteous.