时间:2018-11-30 作者:英语课 分类:英语专业晨读美文


英语课

[00:01.62]“Magic Mum”at Harvard University

[00:09.50]President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation

[00:12.77]and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty 1,

[00:15.73] proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

[00:19.77]The first thing I would like to say is thank you.

[00:22.73]Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour,

[00:25.79]but the weeks of fear and nausea 2

[00:28.09]I've experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address

[00:31.48] have made me lose weight. A win-win situation!

[00:34.87]Now all I have to do is take deep breaths,

[00:38.04]squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing

[00:41.21] I am at the world's best-educated Harry 3 Potter convention.

[00:45.26]Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun.

[00:49.96]That period of my life was a dark one,

[00:52.70]and I had no idea that there was going to be

[00:55.33] what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution.

[00:59.80] I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time,

[01:04.62] any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

[01:08.99]So why do I talk about the benefits of failure?

[01:12.16]Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential.

[01:16.65]I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was,

[01:20.91]and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work

[01:25.18]that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else,

[01:29.45] I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena 4

[01:33.82]I believed I truly belonged to.

[01:35.90] I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised,

[01:40.49]and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored,

[01:44.87] and I had an old typewriter and a big idea.

[01:48.25] And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

[01:53.29]You might think that I chose my second theme,

[01:56.24] the importance of imagination,

[01:58.32]because of the part it played in rebuilding my life,

[02:01.27]but that is not wholly so.

[02:03.67]Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp 5,

[02:08.05]I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense.

[02:12.10] Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that

[02:17.35] which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation.

[02:21.29] In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity,

[02:25.44]it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans

[02:29.38] whose experiences we have never shared.

[02:32.55]So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships.

[02:36.82] And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine,

[02:41.41]you remember those of Seneca,

[02:43.60]another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor,

[02:47.97] in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:

[02:51.80]As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is,

[02:56.17] but how good it is, is what matters.

[02:59.01]I wish you all very good lives.

[03:01.97]Thank you very much.



1 faculty
n.才能;学院,系;(学院或系的)全体教学人员
  • He has a great faculty for learning foreign languages.他有学习外语的天赋。
  • He has the faculty of saying the right thing at the right time.他有在恰当的时候说恰当的话的才智。
2 nausea
n.作呕,恶心;极端的憎恶(或厌恶)
  • Early pregnancy is often accompanied by nausea.怀孕期常有恶心的现象。
  • He experienced nausea after eating octopus.吃了章鱼后他感到恶心。
3 harry
vt.掠夺,蹂躏,使苦恼
  • Today,people feel more hurried and harried.今天,人们感到更加忙碌和苦恼。
  • Obama harried business by Healthcare Reform plan.奥巴马用医改掠夺了商界。
4 arena
n.竞技场,运动场所;竞争场所,舞台
  • She entered the political arena at the age of 25. 她25岁进入政界。
  • He had not an adequate arena for the exercise of his talents.他没有充分发挥其才能的场所。
5 gasp
n.喘息,气喘;v.喘息;气吁吁他说
  • She gave a gasp of surprise.她吃惊得大口喘气。
  • The enemy are at their last gasp.敌人在做垂死的挣扎。
学英语单词
adaptive equalization
aetiolation
aniline furfural
antijam communication
artificial dentition
astraphobic
aurorally
beta-gamma unsaturation
bow propulsion machinery
Breyer
burner zone wall heat release rate
cent (unit of reactivity)
checkpost
coltie
command retrieval system
complete axiom set
comprehensive account
cottrell precipitators
coupon advertising
Crolan
cross laminated wood
cyanoformate
deaggregate
detector compartment
detrital phase
disinsulation
Dolgusha
dowel(l)ing
dust guard seat
dysaethria erasaria
ephelis japonica p.henn.
excrementitious
facial neuralgia
faltung integral
FEP
fluorescent inspection
garam masalas
general connector
gorsedds
gross misbehavior
Gussola
high velocity
I like you
industrial packaging
insurance scheme
ISES
Jabal Sudayk
jokiness
keep ... going
lateral viscosity
live pick-up
mailcom
MEV
microcavitation
minor rally
Miyagawanella felis
more efficient fixed assets
Moyo, Pulau
Nailsea glass
name-age
neoimpressionism
neotropical disjunction
northwestwards
number of theoretical plates
oil sump strainer
operation of law
overaccelerate
phrenologize
pre ignition
prepress
push-pull variable capacitance
qualify requirement
ragingly
recurvoside
rescalings
rhabdopholist
ristori
sandre
sectionalising
short wood harvester
side-entrance
single-particle excitation
skin-protecting agent
skynet (sky network satellite)
smatching
sonodome
special grade steel wire rope
stacked heads
statehouse
status-conscious
stretches out
strong pressure
superconductivity model
supra-orbital arch
tattowing
tricksy
turing unit
valve cage
velocity equivalent
venture evaluation and review technique
water bottom gas producer
wingfish