时间:2018-11-30 作者:英语课 分类:英语励志美文精华


英语课

Causes Are People


By Susan Parker Cobbs


It has not been easy for me to meet this assignment. We have so many changing and transitory beliefs besides the ones most central to our lives. I hope that what I say won’t sound either too simple or too pious 1.


I know that it is my deep and fixed 2 conviction that man has within him the force of good and a power to translate that force into life. For me, this means a pattern of life that makes personal relationships more important, a pattern that makes more beautiful and attractive the personal virtues 3: courage, humility 4, selflessness, and love.


I used to smile at my mother because the tears came so readily to her eyes when she heard or read of some incident that called out these virtues. I don’t smile anymore, because I find I have become more and more responsive in the same inconvenient 5 way to the same kind of story. And so, I believe, that I both can and must work to achieve the good that is in me. The words of Socrates keep coming back to me: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” By examination, we can discover what is our good, and we can realize that knowledge of good means its achievement.


I know that such self-examination has never been easy. Plato maintained that it was “the soul’s eternal search.” It seems, to me, particularly difficult now. In a period of such rapid material expansion and such widespread conflicts, black and white have become gray and will not easily separate. There is a belief, which follows from this: If I have the potential of the good life within me and the compulsion to express it, then it is a power and a compulsion common to all men. What I must have for myself to conduct my search, all men must have: freedom of choice, faith in the power and the beneficent qualities of truth.


What frightens me most, today, is the denial of these rights because this can only come from the denial of, what seems to me, the essential nature of man. For if my conviction holds, man is more important than anything he’s created, and our great task is to bring back again, into a subordinate position, the monstrous 7 superstructures of our society.


I hope this way of reducing our problems to the human equation is not simply an evasion 8 of them. I don’t believe it is. For most of us, it is the only area, in which we can work—the human area, with ourselves, with the people we touch—and through these, too, a vicarious understanding with mankind.


I watch young people these days wrestling with our mighty 9 problems. They are much more concerned with them than my generation of students ever was. They are deeply aware of the words equality and justice. But in their great desire to right wrong, they are prone 10 to forget that cult 6 is a people—that nothing matters more than people. They need to add to their crusades the warmer and more affecting virtues of compassion 11 and love. And here again come those personal virtues that bring tears to the eyes.


One further word: I believe that the power of good within us is real and comes there from a source outside and beyond ourselves. Otherwise, I could not put my trust so firmly in it.



1 pious
adj.虔诚的;道貌岸然的
  • Alexander is a pious follower of the faith.亚历山大是个虔诚的信徒。
  • Her mother was a pious Christian.她母亲是一个虔诚的基督教徒。
2 fixed
adj.固定的,不变的,准备好的;(计算机)固定的
  • Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗?
  • Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定,我们就不应该随意改变。
3 virtues
美德( virtue的名词复数 ); 德行; 优点; 长处
  • Doctors often extol the virtues of eating less fat. 医生常常宣扬少吃脂肪的好处。
  • She delivered a homily on the virtues of family life. 她进行了一场家庭生活美德方面的说教。
4 humility
n.谦逊,谦恭
  • Humility often gains more than pride.谦逊往往比骄傲收益更多。
  • His voice was still soft and filled with specious humility.他的声音还是那么温和,甚至有点谦卑。
5 inconvenient
adj.不方便的,令人感到麻烦的
  • You have come at a very inconvenient time.你来得最不适时。
  • Will it be inconvenient for him to attend that meeting?他参加那次会议会不方便吗?
6 cult
n.异教,邪教;时尚,狂热的崇拜
  • Her books aren't bestsellers,but they have a certain cult following.她的书算不上畅销书,但有一定的崇拜者。
  • The cult of sun worship is probably the most primitive one.太阳崇拜仪式或许是最为原始的一种。
7 monstrous
adj.巨大的;恐怖的;可耻的,丢脸的
  • The smoke began to whirl and grew into a monstrous column.浓烟开始盘旋上升,形成了一个巨大的烟柱。
  • Your behaviour in class is monstrous!你在课堂上的行为真是丢人!
8 evasion
n.逃避,偷漏(税)
  • The movie star is in prison for tax evasion.那位影星因为逃税而坐牢。
  • The act was passed as a safeguard against tax evasion.这项法案旨在防止逃税行为。
9 mighty
adj.强有力的;巨大的
  • A mighty force was about to break loose.一股巨大的力量即将迸发而出。
  • The mighty iceberg came into view.巨大的冰山出现在眼前。
10 prone
adj.(to)易于…的,很可能…的;俯卧的
  • Some people are prone to jump to hasty conclusions.有些人往往作出轻率的结论。
  • He is prone to lose his temper when people disagree with him.人家一不同意他的意见,他就发脾气。
11 compassion
n.同情,怜悯
  • He could not help having compassion for the poor creature.他情不自禁地怜悯起那个可怜的人来。
  • Her heart was filled with compassion for the motherless children.她对于没有母亲的孩子们充满了怜悯心。
学英语单词
Acaňiza
agalmatolite brick
age and intelligence
analytical virology
Angel of the North
aphelion distance
atheoretical study
bio
biological coefficient
bonferroni correction
boodman
booking space
brown sauces
bulk sale
carmencita
cathedral pk.
catheterised
Chimonobambusa microfloscula
coe
Colum, Padraic
continuous wave magnetron
controllable pitch
controuersy
cpsa
crank effort
data processing device
data processing rate
delayed set cementing
deploying
diluvy
disc electroporesis
distortion analysis
dodecyloxymethyl
downdraught furnace
downslurs
DT-cut
dumb things
elatives
electric apparatus room
electrically driven tuning fork
energy-service
favoritisms
fixed bat reel
fringe analysis
Geslin
griffith equation for fracture stress of a crack
haboub
hokerful
hygeist
image fusion
infantilist
initial steam flow rate
intercarrier sound receiver
ipselateral
iron-nickel-copper-molybdenum alloy
izinyanga
know someone by sight
Korzybie
magnetoelectric detonator
memory rewind
movable block machine
Nasalide
new leaf
nezer
non-interest-bearing securities
normal strain
nothing doing
oligopepsia
outfit
photolectric surface
pier capping beam
plasmoderma
polite learning
potest
President Harrison
proveer
pumping capacity
recessus phrenicomediastinum
recourse fund
reshipping
revetment
right inverse
ringtones
scolioses
seizure of goods
self-contained pump
shake sth out
shift variables
Shiniulanian Stage
single-row boot
Spanish-American
spur geared
sterilised
straight through boiler
Stringf.
take everything bar the kitchen sink
testies
tubera candidicans
turn a blind eye to
unionizer
Windows App Store
Zimbabwe Dollar