晨讀英語(yǔ)美文100篇前20篇

1、星火書業(yè) 晨讀英語(yǔ)美文100篇六級(jí)Passage1. Knowledge and VirtueKnowledge is one thing, virtue is another; good sense is not conscience, refinement is not humility, nor is largeness and justness of view faith. Philosophy, however enlightened, however profound, gives no command over the passions, no influential motiv

2、es, no vivifying principles. Liberal Education makes not the Christian, not the Catholic, but the gentleman. It is well to be a gentleman, it is well to have a cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a candid, equitable, dispassionate mind, a noble and courteous bearing in the conduct of lifethese a

3、re the connatural qualities of a large knowledge; they are the objects of a University. I am advocating, I shall illustrate and insist upon them;but still, I repeat, they are no guarantee for sanctity or even for conscientiousness, and they may attach to the man of the world, to the profligate, to t

4、he heartless, pleasant, alas, and attractive as he shows when decked out in them. Taken by themselves, they do but seem to be what they are not; they look like virtue at a distance, but they are detected by close observers, and in the long run; and hence it is that they are popularly accused of pret

5、ense and hypocrisy, not, I repeat, from their own fault, but because their professors and their admirers persist in taking them for what they are not, and are officious in arrogating for them a praise to which they have no claim. Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread

6、of silk, then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man.Passage2. “Packing” a Person A person, like a commodity, needs packaging. But going too far is absolutely undesirable. A little exa

7、ggeration, however, does no harm when it shows the person's unique qualities to their advantage. To display personal charm in a casual and natural way, it is important for one to have a clear knowledge of oneself. A master packager knows how to integrate art and nature without any traces of embe

8、llishment, so that the person so packaged is no commodity but a human being, lively and lovely. A young person, especially a female, radiant with beauty and full of life, has all the favor granted by God. Any attempt to make up would be self-defeating. Youth, however, comes and goes in a moment of d

9、oze. Packaging for the middle-aged is primarily to conceal the furrows ploughed by time. If you still enjoy life's exuberance enough to retain self-confidence and pursue pioneering work, you are unique in your natural qualities, and your charm and grace will remain. Elderly people are beautiful

10、if their river of life has been, through plains, mountains and jungles, running its course as it should. You have really lived your life which now arrives at a complacent stage of serenity indifferent to fame or wealth. There is no need to resort to hair-dyeing；the snow-capped mountain is itself a b

11、eautiful scene of fairyland. Let your looks change from young to old synchronizing with the natural ageing process so as to keep in harmony with nature, for harmony itself is beauty, while the other way round will only end in unpleasantness. To be in the elder's company is like reading a thick b

12、ook of deluxe edition that fascinates one so much as to be reluctant to part with. As long as one finds where one stands, one knows how to package oneself, just as a commodity establishes its brand by the right packaging. Passage3. Three Passions I Have Lived for Three passions, simple but overwhelm

13、ingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. I have s

14、ought love, first, because it brings ecstasy ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of my life for a few hours for this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world

15、into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is whatat las

16、tI have found. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine . A little of this, but not much, I have achieved. Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brou

17、ght me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil,

18、 but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.Passage4. A Little Girl Sitting on a grassy grave, beneath one of the windows of the church, was a little girl. With her head bent back she was gazing up

19、 at the sky and singing, while one of her little hands was pointing to a tiny cloud that hovered like a golden feather above her head. The sun, which had suddenly become very bright, shining on her glossy hair, gave it a metallic luster, and it was difficult to say what was the color, dark bronze or

20、 black. So completely absorbed was she in watching the cloud to which her strange song or incantation seemed addressed, that she did not observe me when I rose and went towards her. Over her head, high up in the blue, a lark that was soaring towards the same gauzy cloud was singing, as if in rivalry

21、. As I slowly approached the child, I could see by her forehead, which in the sunshine seemed like a globe of pearl, and especially by her complexion, that she uncommonly lovely. Her eyes, which at one moment seemed blue-gray, at another violet, were shaded by long black lashes, curving backward in

22、a most peculiar way, and these matched in hue her eyebrows, and the tresses that were tossed about her tender throat were quivering in the sunlight. All this I did not take in at once; for at first I could see nothing but those quivering, glittering, changeful eyes turned up into my face. Gradually

23、the other features, especially the sensitive full-lipped mouth, grew upon me as I stood silently gazing. Here seemed to me a more perfect beauty than had ever come to me in my loveliest dreams of beauty. Yet it was not her beauty so much as the look she gave me that fascinated me, melted me.Passage5

24、 Declaration of Independence When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God

25、 entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among thes

26、e are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to aboli

27、sh it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transi

28、ent causes; and accordingly all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a de

29、sign to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Syst

30、ems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain George III is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. Passage6. A Tribute to th

31、e DogThe best friend a man has in the world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name, may become traitors to their faith.

32、The money that a man has he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it most. A mans reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice

33、when failure settles its cloud upon our heads. The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog. A mans dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sicknes

34、s. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his masters side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer; he will lick the wounds and sores that come from encounter with the roughness of the world. He will guard the sleep

35、 of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journeys through the heavens. If fortune drives the master forth, an outcast in the world, friendless and ho

36、meless，the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him, to guard him against danger, to fight against his enemies. And when the last scene of all comes, and death takes the master in its embrace, and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pur

37、sue their way, there by the grave will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even in death.Passage7. Knowledge and ProgressWhy does the idea of progress loom so large in the modern world? Surely because progress of a particu

38、lar kind is actually taking place around us and is becoming more and more manifest. Although mankind has undergone no general improvement in intelligence or morality, it has made extraordinary progress in the accumulation of knowledge. Knowledge began to increase as soon as the thoughts of one indiv

39、idual could be communicated to another by means of speech. With the invention of writing， a great advance was made, for knowledge could then be not only communicated but also stored. Libraries made education possible, and education in its turn added to libraries: the growth of knowledge followed a k

40、ind of compound interest law, which was greatly enhanced by the invention of printing. All this was comparatively slow until, with the coming of science, the tempo was suddenly raised. Then knowledge began to be accumulated according to a systematic plan. The trickle became a stream; the stream has

41、now become a torrent. Moreover, as soon as new knowledge is acquired, it is now turned to practical account. What is called “modern civilization” is not the result of a balanced development of all man's nature, but of accumulated knowledge applied to practical life. The problem now facing humani

42、ty is: What is going to be done with all this knowledge? As is so often pointed out, knowledge is a two-edged weapon which can be used equally for good or evil. It is now being used indifferently for both. Could any spectacle, for instance, be more grimly weird than that of gunners using science to

43、shatter men's bodies while, close at hand, surgeons use it to restore them? We have to ask ourselves very seriously what will happen if this twofold use of knowledge, with its ever-increasing power, continues. Passage8. Address by EngelsOn the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoo

44、n, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleepbut forever. An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant proletariat of Europe and America, and by historical

45、science, in the death of this man. The gap that has been left by the departure of this mighty spirit will soon enough make itself felt. Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed

46、by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the degree of economic development attained b

47、y a given people or during a given epoch form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto

48、been the case. But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special law of motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on the problem, in trying to solve which

49、all previous investigations, of both bourgeois economists and socialist critics, had been groping in the dark. Two such discoveries would be enough for one lifetime. Happy the man to whom it is granted to make even one such discovery. But in every single field which Marx investigatedand he investiga

50、ted very many fields, none of them superficiallyin every field, even in that of mathematics, he made independent discoveries. Passage9. Relationship that LastsIf somebody tells you,“ Ill love you for ever,” will you believe it? I dont think theres any reason not to. We are ready to believe such comm

51、itment at the moment, whatever change may happen afterwards. As for the belief in an everlasting love, thats another thing. Then you may be asked whether there is such a thing as an everlasting love. Id answer I believe in it, but an everlasting love is not immutable. You may unswervingly love or be

52、 loved by a person. But love will change its composition with the passage of time. It will not remain the same. In the course of your growth and as a result of your increased experience, love will become something different to you. In the beginning you believed a fervent love for a person could last

53、 definitely. By and by, however, “fervent” gave way to “prosaic”. Precisely because of this change it became possible for love to last. Then what was meant by an everlasting love would eventually end up in a sort of interdependence. We used to insist on the difference between love and liking. The fo

54、rmer seemed much more beautiful than the latter. One day, however, it turns out theres really no need to make such difference. Liking is actually a sort of love. By the same token, the everlasting interdependence is actually an everlasting love. I wish I could believe there was somebody who would lo

55、ve me for ever. Thats, as we all know, too romantic to be true. Instead, it will more often than not be a case of lasting relationship. Passage10. RushSwallows may have gone, but there is a time of return; willow trees may have died back, but there is a time of regreening; peach blossoms may have fa

56、llen, but they will bloom again. Now, you the wise, tell me, why should our days leave us, never to return? If they had been stolen by someone, who could it be? Where could he hide them? If they had made the escape themselves, then where could they stay at the moment? I dont know how many days I hav

57、e been given to spend, but I do feel my hands are getting empty. Taking stock silently, I find that more than eight thousand days have already slid away from me. Like a drop of water from the point of a needle disappearing into the ocean, my days are dripping into the stream of time, soundless, trac

58、eless. Already sweat is starting on my forehead, and tears welling up in my eyes. Those that have gone have gone for good, those to come keep coming; yet in between, how fast is the shift, in such a rush? When I get up in the morning, the slanting sun marks its presence in my small room in two or th

59、ree oblongs. The sun has feet, look, he is treading on, lightly and furtively; and I am caught, blankly, in his revolution. Thus the day flows away through the sink when I wash my hands, wears off in the bowl when I eat my meal, and passes away before my day-dreaming gaze as reflect in silence. I can feel his haste now, so I reach out my hands to hold him back, but he keeps flowing past my withholding hands. In the evening, as I lie in bed, he strides over my body, glides past my feet, in his agile way. The moment I open m