饱含经典哲理的英语美文赏析
饱含经典哲理的英语美文赏析
优美的文字于细微处传达出美感，并浸润着人们的心灵。通过英语美文,不仅能够感受语言之美,领悟语言之用，还能产生学习语言的兴趣。度过一段美好的时光，即感悟生活，触动心灵。
下面是小编为大家带来英语经典哲理美文赏析，希望大家喜欢!
一、我们周围隐秘的世界
ever since socrates was introduced to my adolescent mind he has been one chief master of my thinking. what he believed still seems to me to be indispensable for carrying on an intelligent and responsible life. he believed that he did not know. for myself, i have come to change his negative into a positive. i know that there is far more in this universe for me to know than i now know.
少年时代我接触到了苏格拉底的思想，从此，他便成了我的思想导师。在我看来，苏格拉底的信仰在明智而负责的生活中始终不可或缺。苏格拉底相信自己无知，而我将他的否定句变为了肯定句。我知道，除了我现有的知识，宇宙中尚有无穷多的知识等待我们去学习。
i recently had a dramatic illustration of this. my wife and i, driving through arizona, stopped at a “collector’s shop” in tucson, where stones and minerals of many kinds were on display. in the course of the visit, we were taken into a small room where rocks were laid out on shelves. they were quite ordinary-looking rocks. had i seen them on some hillside, i would not have given them a second thought. then the man closed the door so that the room was in total darkness and turned on an ultraviolet lamp.
最近，我经历了一个生动的例证。我和妻子开车穿过亚利桑那州时，停车参观了图森市一家陈列着各种各样的石头与矿石的收藏店。在参观过程中，我们被带到了一个架子上摆满石头的小房间里。看起来，这些石头没什么特别。如果在山边看到，恐怕我都不想再看第二眼了。店员关上了门，房间里顿时一片漆黑，然后他打开了一盏紫外线照射灯。
instantly the prosaic rocks leaped into a kind of glory. brilliant colors of an indescribable beauty were there before our eyes.
霎那间，这些普通的石头立刻变得光彩夺目。顿时，一种难以形容的灿烂与美丽出现在我们眼前。
a very simple thing—and yet a very tremendous thing—had happened. a certain power had been snapped on; and a hidden world leaped into life.
一件非常平凡却又无比奇妙的事情就这样发生了。突然间，出现了某种力量，一个隐秘的世界骤然出现在生活中。
as i look at my universe and walk among my fellow humans, i have the deep belief that hidden realities are all around us. these hidden realities are there in the physical world; and they are there, also, in the human world. if i am foolish enough to think that i see all there is to be seen in front of my eyes, i simply miss the glory.
当我凝视着眼前的世界，或穿梭在茫茫人海之中，我深信我们周围存在着一个隐秘的现实。它们存在于物质世界之中，也存在于人类世界中。如果我愚笨地认为，眼前的一切就是我应看到的所有事物，那我就错过了辉煌。
i believe, then, that my chief job in life—and my astonishing privilege—is to snap on an extra power so that i can see what my naked eyes—or my naked mind—cannot now see. i believe that i have to do this particularly with my human fellows. my ordinary eyes tend to stop short at those opaque envelopes we call human bodies. but we have learned that by turning on a certain power we can penetrate to the inside of these envelopes.
我相信，为了能够看到我肉眼所无法看到的一切，或是我知识贫乏的大脑所无法理解的东西，就必须抓住一种非凡的力量，这是我一生中的首要任务，也是我的神奇优势。我坚信，我应当去做，尤其是与他人一起去做。我的凡眼只能看到人的躯体，但我们已经学会了依靠某种力量，透过不透明的躯体看到人的内在。
we call this extra power “imagination.” at its highest, we call it “empathy,” the power to see through and to feel through to the inner life of other human beings. it is a kind of ultraviolet lamp of our psychic life. when we turn on this lamp of imaginative sensitivity, we make the prosaic human beings around us come excitingly alive.zona gale once set down as the first article of her creed: “i believe in expanding the areas of my awareness.” i’d do the same. if i expand the areas of my awareness, i move understandingly into realities beyond me. when i move into them understandingly, i know what i can do and what i should do. if i don’t move in understandingly, if i stay in ignorance on the outside, then, in all likelihood, i will do mistaken things.
我们称这种非凡的力量为“想象”。想象力的最高级别，即是我们所说的“移情作用”，这种力量能够透过表面，看到或感受到他人的内心世界。它就像是我们精神生活中的紫外线照射灯。当我们将这盏想象的灯打开，就能使周围平凡的人们充满活力。“我相信，应当扩展我的认知领域。”这是佐纳?盖尔曾经写下的第一条信仰。我也要这么做。如果我的认知领域能够得到扩展，那我就能够理解那些我无法领悟的现实。如果我理解了这些现实，就可以明白自己能做什么，应该做什么。如果我无法理解，而是无知地在门外徘徊，那么我很可能会做错事。
the great principle of love depends on this. he who loves another tries truly to understand the other. we can reverse this: he who tries truly to understand another is not likely to hate that other.
爱的伟大原则也是来源于此。爱人者，会真正地理解他人。反过来也可以说，一个真正理解他人的人，自然不可能憎恨他人。
socrates gave no finished catalogue of the “truths” of the world. he gave, rather, the impulse to search. this is far better, i feel, than dogmatic certainty. when we are aware that there are glories of life still hidden from us, we walk humbly before the great unknown. but we do more than this: we try manfully to increase our powers of seeing and feeling so that we can turn what is still unknown into what is warmly and understandingly known…this, i believe, is our great human adventure.
苏格拉底并没有将世界“真理”的目录完全列出，而是给予我们探索的动力。我认为，这样的好处远远大于教条式的理论。当我们认识到，周围依然隐秘着生命的奇迹时，在上帝面前我们就会谦卑而行。但我们要做的还有更多：我们要勇于努力提高我们观察与感受的能力，以便于将未知的世界转变为我们能够深切领悟的已知世界……我相信，这是我们人类的伟大探险。
二、午夜的一课
ever since one midnight, in nineteen hundred and nine, when i first heard my mother crying, i have been groping for beliefs to help me through the rough going and confusions of life. my dad’s voice was low and troubled as he tried to comfort mother. and in their anguish, they both forgot the nearness of my bedroom. and so, i overheard them. i was only seven then, and while their problem of that time has long since been solved and forgotten, the big discovery i made that night is still right with me: life is not all hearts and flowers; indeed it’s hard and cruel for most of us much of the time. we all have troubles, they just differ in nature, that’s all. and that leads me to my first belief.
自1909年的一个午夜第一次听到母亲哭泣以来，我一直寻找信仰帮我度过生活中的艰辛与困惑。父亲安慰母亲时，声音低沉而忧郁。极度的痛苦让他们忘记我的卧室就在附近。我无意中听到了他们的谈话，那时我只有七岁。尽管他们当时的问题如今已经解决也被遗忘，但那一晚的重大发现仍然教导我：生活并不总是充满鲜花和爱情。许多时候生活对于我们大多数人来说艰辛而残酷，我们都有烦恼，只是烦恼的性质不同，仅此而已。这就是我的第一个信念。
i believe the human race is very, very tough—almost impossible to discourage. if it wasn’t, then why do we have such words as “laugh” and “sing” and “music” and “dance”—in the language of all mankind since the beginning of recorded time? this belief makes me downright proud to be a human being.
我相信人类十分坚强，几乎不可能感到灰心沮丧。如若不然，为何有史以来人类所有的语言中都有“欢笑”、“歌唱”、“音乐”和“舞蹈”这样的词呢?这一信念让我无比自豪，因为我是一个人。
next, i believe there is good and evil in all of us. thomas mann comes close to expressing what i’m trying to say to you with his carefully worded sentence about the “frightfully radical duality” between the brain and the beast in man—in all of us.
其次，我相信我们都有善和恶的一面。托马斯.曼字斟句酌地阐述了人类(我们所有人)身上存在的理智与兽性这一“极基本的双重性”时，几乎道出了我的观点。
this belief helps me because so long as i remember that there are certain forces of evil ever present in me—and never forget that there is also a divine spark of goodness in me, too—then i find the “score” of my bad mistakes at the end of each day is greatly reduced. “forewarned of evil, in other words, is half the battle against it.”
i believe in trying to be charitable, in trying to understand and forgive people, especially in trying to forgive very keen or brilliant people. a man may be a genius, you know, but he can still do things that practically break your heart.
这种信仰让我受益，因为只要记住自己身上一直存在着某些邪恶的力量——但也从未忘记自己身上也有上帝赐予的善良火花——我就会发现每天结束时，错误和悔恨的“得分”大大降低。可见“事先警惕恶行是与之斗争成功的一半”。我相信人要尽量乐善好施，尽量理解和宽恕别人，尤其要宽恕特别敏锐和聪慧的人，因为即使天才也会做出让你伤心的事情。
i believe most if not all of our very finest thoughts and many of our finest deeds must be kept to ourselves alone—at least until after we die. this used to confuse me. but now i realize that by their very nature, these finest things we do and then cannot talk about are a sort of, well, secret preview of a better life to come.
i believe there is no escape from the rule of life that we must do many, many little things to accomplish even just one big thing. this gives me patience when i need it most.
我相信，即使不是全部，大多数我们提出的最富创见的思想，大多数我们实施的最富成果的行为，都不应让人知道我们提出和实施的——至少要到我们去世之后才能让人知道。这一点过去常让我感到困惑，但如今我明白，我们完成这些最美妙的事情却秘而不宣，实质上是暗地里预见未来更美好的生活。我相信我们必须做许许多多小事才能成就大事，哪怕只一件大事。这一规律无法逃避。这种信仰使我在最需要办大事的时候很耐心。
and then i believe in having the courage to be yourself. or perhaps i should say, to be honest with myself. sometimes this is practically impossible, but i’m sure i should always try.
还有，我相信要有勇气还自己本色。或许我该说，要对自己实事求是。有时这几乎不可能，但我确信我应该永远努力为之。
finally, and most important to me, i do believe in god. i’m sure there is a very wise and wonderful being who designed, constructed, and operates this existence as we mortals know it: this universe with its galaxies and spiral nebulae, its stars and moons and planets and beautiful women, its trees and pearls and deep green moss—and its hopes and prayers for peace.
最后一点，也是对我而言最重要的一点，我深深信仰上帝。我确信有一位非常睿智和神奇的神灵设计、建造并统治这个世界，就像我们凡人所认识的样子：这个宇宙有星群、螺旋型的星云、星星、月亮、行星、美女、树木、珍珠和深绿的苔藓，还有希望和对和平的祈祷。