英语经典短篇美文（第1篇）

　　We have learnt to expect that trains will be punctual. after years of pre-conditioning, most of us have developed an unshakable faith in railway time-tables. ships may be delayed by storms; air flights may be cancelled because of bad weather; but trains must be on time. only an exceptionally heavy snow fall might temporarily dislocate railway services. it is all too easy to blame the railway authorities when something does go wrong. the truth is that when mistakes

　　Occur, they are more likely to be ours than theirs.

　　After consulting my railway time-table, i noted with satisfaction that there was an express train to westhaven. it went direct from my local station and the journey lasted a mere hour and seventeen minutes. when i boarded the train, i could not help noticing that a great many local people got on as well. at the time, this did not strike me as odd. i reflected that there must be a great many people besides myself who wished to take advantage of this excellent service. neither was i surprised when the train stopped at widley, a tiny station a few miles along the line. even a mighty express train can be held up by signals. but when the train dawdled at station after station, i began to wonder. it suddenly dawned on me that this express was not roaring down the line at ninety miles an hour, but barely chugging along at thirty. one hour and seventeen minutes passed and we had not even covered half the distance. i asked a passenger if this was the westhaven express, but he had not even heard of it. i determined to lodge a complaint as soon as we arrived. two hours later, i was talking angrily to the station-master at westhaven. when he denied the train's existence, i borrowed his copy of the time-table. there was a note of triumph in my voice when i told him that it was there in black and white. glancing at it briefly, he told me to look again. a tiny asterisk conducted me to a footnote at the bottom of the page. it said: 'this service has been suspended.'

英语经典短篇美文（第2篇）

　　Tucked away in our subconsciousness is an idyllic vision. We see ourselves on a long trip that spans the continent. We are traveling by train. Out the windows, we drink in the passing scene of cars on nearby highways, of children waving at a crossing, of cattle grazing on a distant hillside, of smoke pouring from a power plant, of row upon row of corn and wheat, of flatlands and valleys, of mountains and rolling hills, of city skylines and village halls.

　　But uppermost in our minds is the final destination. On a certain day at a certain hour, we will pull into the station. Bands will be playing and flags waving. Once we get there, so many wonderful dreams will come true and the pieces of our lives will fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzle. How restlessly we pace the aisles, damning the minutes for loitering — waiting,waiting, waiting for the station.

　　“When we reach the station, that will be it!” we cry. “When I’m 18.” “When I buy a new 450SL Mercedes Benz.” “When I put the last kid through college.” “When I have paid off the mortgage.” “When I get a promotion.” “When I reach the age of retirement, I shall live happily ever after!”

　　Sooner or later, we must realize that there is no station, no one place to arrive at once and for all. The true joy of life is the trip. The station is only a dream. It constantly out distances us.

　　“Relish the moment” is a good motto, especially when coupled with Psalm 118:24: “This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” It isn’t the burdens of today that drive men mad. It is the regret over yesterday and the fear of tomorrow. Regret and fear are twin thieves who rob us of today.

　　So stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles. Instead, climb more mountains, eat more icecream, go barefoot more often, swim more rivers, watch more sunset, laugh more and cry less. Life must be lived as we go along. Then the station will come soon enough.

英语经典短篇美文（第3篇）

　　There is a proverb, “All work and no play makes Jack a dullboy.” That is to say, if we want to be in good health, we shouldrelax ourselves after the day’s hard work.

　　Yet, everyone has his own way of relaxation. For those who sitmuch at their business, going for sports is the best relaxation.They may swim, run, play football or table tennis and so on. Butfor people engaged in outdoor work, reading or playing chess is anexcellent change. What’s more, making a trip on weekends is also agood pastime.

　　I like sports and often take part in it. My favorite sport isswimming. Because it brings the whole body into action ,In thewater ,I feel rather relaxed and all the fatigue goes away .Itmakes me energetic in the next day’s work.

英语经典短篇美文（第4篇）

　　Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no days, no hours or minutes. All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else.

　　Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance. It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.

　　Your grudges, resentments, frustrations, and jealousies will finally disappear.

　　So, too, your hopes, ambitions, plans, and to-do lists will all expire. The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.

　　It won't matter where you came from, or on what side of the tracks you lived.

　　It won't matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant. Your gender, skin color, ethnicity will be irrelevant.

　　So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured?

　　What will matter is not what you bought, but what you bui< not what you got, but what you gave.

　　What will matter is not your success, but your significance.

　　What will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught.

　　What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage and sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.

　　What will matter is not your competence, but your character.

　　What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you're gone.

　　What will matter is not your memories, but the memories of those who loved you.

　　What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what.

　　Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident.

　　It's not a matter of circumstance but of choice.

　　Choose to live a life that matters.

英语经典短篇美文（第5篇）

　　I think that, from a biological standpoint, human life almost reads like a poem. It has its own rhythm and beat, its internal cycles of growth and decay. It begins with innocent childhood, followed by awkward adolescence trying awkwardly to adapt itself to mature society, with its young passions and follies, its ideals and ambitions; then it reaches a manhood of intense activities, profiting from experience and learning more about society and human nature; at middle age, there is a slight easing of tension, a mellowing of character like the ripening of fruit or the mellowing of good wine, and the gradual acquiring of a more tolerant, more cynical and at the same time a kindlier view of life; then In the sunset of our life, the endocrine glands decrease their activity, and if we have a true philosophy of old age and have ordered our life pattern according to it, it is for us the age of peace and security and leisure and contentment; finally, life flickers out and one goes into eternal sleep, never to wake up again.

　　One should be able to sense the beauty of this rhythm of life, to appreciate, as we do in grand symphonies, its main theme, its strains of conflict and the final resolution. The movements of these cycles are very much the same in a normal life, but the music must be provided by the individual himself. In some souls, the discordant note becomes harsher and harsher and finally overwhelms or submerges the main melody. Sometimes the discordant note gains so much power that the music can no longer go on, and the individual shoots himself with a pistol or jump into a river. But that is because his original leitmotif has been hopelessly over-showed through the lack of a good self-education. Otherwise the normal human life runs to its normal end in kind of dignified movement and procession. There are sometimes in many of us too many staccatos or impetuosos, and because the tempo is wrong, the music is not pleasing to the ear; we might have more of the grand rhythm and majestic tempo o the Ganges, flowing slowly and eternally into the sea.

　　No one can say that life with childhood, manhood and old age is not a beautiful arrangement; the day has its morning, noon and sunset, and the year has its seasons, and it is good that it is so. There is no good or bad in life, except what is good according to its own season. And if we take this biological view of life and try to live according to the seasons, no one but a conceited fool or an impossible idealist can deny that human life can be lived like a poem. Shakespeare has expressed this idea more graphically in his passage about the seven stages of life, and a good many Chinese writers have said about the same thing. It is curious that Shakespeare was never very religious, or very much concerned with religion. I think this was his greatness; he took human life largely as it was, and intruded himself as little upon the general scheme of things as he did upon the characters of his plays. Shakespeare was like Nature itself, and that is the greatest compliment we can pay to a writer or thinker. He merely lived, observed life and went away.

英语经典短篇美文（第6篇）

　　It was a sunny Saturday afternoon in Oklahoma City. My friend and proud father Bobby Lewis was taking his two little boys to play miniature golf. He walked up to the fellow at the ticket counter and said, "How much is it to get in?"

　　The young man replied, "$3.00 for you and $3.00 for any kid who is older than six. We let them in free if they are six or younger. How old are they?"

　　Bobby replied, "The lawyer's three and the doctor is seven, so I guess I owe you $6.00."

　　The man at the ticket counter said, "Hey, Mister, did you just win the lottery or something? You could have saved yourself three bucks. You could have told me that the older one was six; I wouldn't have known the difference." Bobby replied, "Yes, that may be true, but the kids would have known the difference."

　　As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying." In challenging times when ethics are more important than ever before, make sure you set a good example for everyone you work and live with.

英语经典短篇美文（第7篇）

　　Some people say thatpromises are made to be broken. That certainly seems to be true inthis cutthroat society that we live in. But if you break yourpromise, you will ruin your reputation and no one will trust youanymore. So whenever we say, “I give you my word,” we should meanit. There is nothing worse than to be let down by others becausethey have not kept their promises.

　　In fact, it isn’t sodifferent to keep promises. Just remember never to promise anythingwe are not sure we can live up to. In short, therefore, to betrustworthy, we should always say what we mean and mean what wesay.

英语经典短篇美文（第8篇）

　　The significant inscription found on an old key---“If I rest, I rust”---would be an excellent motto for those who are afflicted with the slightest bit of idleness. Even the most industrious person might adopt it with advantage to serve as a reminder that, if one allows his faculties to rest, like the iron in the unused key, they will soon show signs of rust and, ultimately, cannot do the work required of them.

　　Those who would attain the heights reached and kept by great men must keep their faculties polished by constant use, so that they may unlock the doors of knowledge, the gate that guard the entrances to the professions, to science, art, literature, agriculture---every department of human endeavor.

　　Industry keeps bright the key that opens the treasury of achievement. If Hugh Miller, after toiling all day in a quarry, had devoted his evenings to rest and recreation, he would never have become a famous geologist. The celebrated mathematician, Edmund Stone, would never have published a mathematical dictionary, never have found the key to science of mathematics, if he had given his spare moments to idleness, had the little Scotch lad, Ferguson, allowed the busy brain to go to sleep while he tended sheep on the hillside instead of calculating the position of the stars by a string of beads, he would never have become a famous astronomer.

　　Labor vanquishes all---not inconstant, spasmodic, or ill-directed labor; but faithful, unremitting, daily effort toward a well-directed purpose. Just as truly as eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, so is eternal industry the price of noble and enduring success.