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A great many people, when they speak of home, tend to associate it with a certain atmosphere, certain physical surroundings, and certain emotional attitudes within themselves. This sentimentality toward home is something that has come down to us from the past. Many modern people do not have it, and I think it is a good thing that they do not.許多人在談到家的時候往往將它和某種氣氛,某種環境及內心的某些情感態度聯系在一起.這種對家的依戀情感古已有之,代代相傳.許多現代人不再有了,我認為這是件好事.In the old days life was difficult. Enemies could attack you and kill or rob you, and you had little protection against them. People did not live in well-built houses where doors could be locked. They did not have the protection of an organized police force or telephones which could summon the police instantly. How did this influence the way people felt about home? Small family groups clung tightly together for protection against beasts and against other men. Only the bravest went beyond the small family area. Even in the Middle Ages only the most daring went to lands beyond sea. The human pursuit of security conditioned men to love their homes. I am sure that this feeling must have been very strong among the early settlers of the United States who were obliged, by famine and oppression, to take the plunge and go to the new land where they knew no one and where they were subject to Indian attack. We can see this even today in the attitudes of minority groups who, because of a feeling of insecurity, still preserve cohesive family ties.在遙遠的過去，人們生活十分艱難．敵人可能會攻擊你，殺害你或搶動你的財富，而你卻毫無還手之力．人們并不住在可以鎖門閉戶的構造堅固的房子里．他們沒有一支有組織的警察隊伍的保護，也不能隨時打電話報警．這些怎樣影響人們對于家的感情呢？小小家庭的成員緊密團結，聚在一起，共同抵御野獸和敵人．只有最勇敢的人才離開小小的家族管轄區．甚至在中世紀也只有最勇敢的人才敢涉足海外．人類對安全的追求決定了人們對家的熱愛．我相信，美國的早期定居者對此一定深有感觸．他們被饑茺壓迫得走投無路，只好毅然決定冒險來到這個舉目元親．易愛印第安人攻擊的陌生的地方．甚至今天，我們從少數民族團體的態度也可以看出這一點．由于缺乏安全感，他們仍然保持著富有凝聚力的家庭紐帶．Today, thanks to modern transportation and well-organized societies, thousands of people willingly and eagerly leave the surroundings where they were born, and the oftener they do so, the less sentiment they are likely to have for those surroundings. I lived in England for three years, and I noticed that boys and girls left their parents’ homes and lived in dwellings of their own. There they could just telephone and ask an agency to provide them with a house or an apartment, which was their home. How has the meaning of this word home been altered by such activity? What does home mean to those people or to families who often move about, living in first one hotel and then another? I believe that for them home means a place where they can have privacy.今天，由于有了現代交通和組織良好的社會，成千上萬的人們愿意并且渴望離開他們出生的環境．而且，他們離家外出越頻繁，對出生的環境的情感就可能越少．我曾經在英國，他們只需拿起電話，要求一家房地產經銷處提供一幢房子或一個套間，那就是他們的家了．家這個詞的意義是如何被這種行為改變的呢？家對于那些經常流動，從一家旅館到另一家旅館居住的人們或家庭成員又意味著什么呢？我認為，家對他們來說是一個離群獨外不受干擾的地方．This idea of home as being a place of privacy is emerging in my country, Saudi Arabia, where the young are abandoning their parents’ homes to live their own life. As for me, the atmosphere and surroundings of the place where my parents live have no sentimental attachment. Home is where I can shut the door and be by myself. At the moment it is a room in Eaton Hall. When I left my parents several years ago, I was anxious to leave. You might call it unfeeling, but that was the way I felt. On the day of my departure for the United States, my grandmother sobbed and wept. My father, however, indicated that he understood how I felt. “Son,” he said, “I am not sorry that you are leaving us. I only hope that you make the most of your time.在我的國家沙特陳拉伯，年輕人放棄父母的家去過他們自己的生活．這種把家作為私人獨處這地的看法正在我的國家形成．我對父母居住之地的氣氛，環境沒有眷戀的情感．家就是一個我能關起門來獨處的地方．現在我的家就是伊登宿舍的一個房間．幾年前當我離開父母時，我沒有戀戀不舍，巴不得快快離開．你也許會覺得這是無情無義，然而那確實是我的感受．我離家去美國尋衛，祖母嗚咽，淚流不止．但我的父親卻表時他能理解我的心情．”孩子”他說”我對于你的離去并覺得悲傷．我只希望你能充分利用時間．” Youth
Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of 60 more than a boy of 20. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.
Whether 60 or 16, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonders, the unfailing appetite for what’s next and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart, there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, courage and power from man and from the infinite, so long as you are young.
When your aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you’ve grown old, even at 20; but as long as your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there’s hope you may die young at 80.
·第二篇： Three Days to See(Excerpts)假如給我三天光明（節選）
Three Days to See
All of us have read thrilling stories in which the hero had only a limited and specified time to live. Sometimes it was as long as a year, sometimes as short as 24 hours. But always we were interested in discovering just how the doomed hero chose to spend his last days or his last hours. I speak, of course, of free men who have a choice, not condemned criminals whose sphere of activities is strictly delimited.
Such stories set us thinking, wondering what we should do under similar circumstances. What events, what experiences, what associations should we crowd into those last hours as mortal beings, what regrets?
Sometimes I have thought it would be an excellent rule to live each day as if we should die tomorrow. Such an attitude would emphasize sharply the values of life. We should live each day with gentleness, vigor and a keenness of appreciation which are often lost when time stretches before us in the constant panorama of more days and months and years to come. There are those, of course, who would adopt the Epicurean motto of “Eat, drink, and be merry”. But most people would be chastened by the certainty of impending death.
In stories the doomed hero is usually saved at the last minute by some stroke of fortune, but almost always his sense of values is changed. He becomes more appreciative of the meaning of life and its permanent spiritual values. It has often been noted that those who live, or have lived, in the shadow of death bring a mellow sweetness to everything they do.
Most of us, however, take life for granted. We know that one day we must die, but usually we picture that day as far in the future. When we are in buoyant health, death is all but unimaginable. We seldom think of it. The days stretch out in an endless vista. So we go about our petty tasks, hardly aware of our listless attitude toward life.
The same lethargy, I am afraid, characterizes the use of all our faculties and senses. Only the deaf appreciate hearing, only the blind realize the manifold blessings that lie in sight. Particularly does this observation apply to those who have lost sight and hearing in adult life. But those who have never suffered impairment of sight or hearing seldom make the fullest use of these blessed faculties. Their eyes and ears take in all sights and sounds hazily, without concentration and with little appreciation. It is the same old story of not being grateful for what we have until we lose it, of not being conscious of health until we are ill.
I have often thought it would be a blessing if each human being were stricken blind and deaf for a few days at some time during his early adult life. Darkness would make him more appreciative of sight; silence would teach him the joys of sound.
·第三篇：Companionship of Books 以書為伴（節選）
Companionship of Books
A man may usually be known by the books he reads as well as by the company he keeps; for there is a companionship of books as well as of men; and one should always live in the best company, whether it be of books or of men.
A good book may be among the best of friends. It is the same today that it always was, and it will never change. It is the most patient and cheerful of companions. It does not turn its back upon us in times of adversity or distress. It always receives us with the same kindness; amusing and instructing us in youth, and comforting and consoling us in age.
Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book just as two persons sometimes discover a friend by the admiration which both entertain for a third. There is an old proverb, ‘Love me, love my dog.” But there is more wisdom in this:” Love me, love my book.” The book is a truer and higher bond of union. Men can think, feel, and sympathize with each other through their favorite author. They live in him together, and he in them.
A good book is often the best urn of a life enshrining the best that life could think out; for the world of a man’s life is, for the most part, but the world of his thoughts. Thus the best books are treasuries of good words, the golden thoughts, which, remembered and cherished, become our constant companions and comforters.
Books possess an essence of immortality. They are by far the most lasting products of human effort. Temples and statues decay, but books survive. Time is of no account with great thoughts, which are as fresh today as when they first passed through their author’s minds, ages ago. What was then said and thought still speaks to us as vividly as ever from the printed page. The only effect of time have been to sift out the bad products; for nothing in literature can long survive e but what is really good.
Books introduce us into the best society; they bring us into the presence of the greatest minds that have ever lived. We hear what they said and did; we see the as if they were really alive; we sympathize with them, enjoy with them, grieve with them; their experience becomes ours, and we feel as if we were in a measure actors with them in the scenes which they describe.
The great and good do not die, even in this world. Embalmed in books, their spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which on still listens.
參考資料： ·第四篇：If I Rest,I Rust 如果我休息，我就會生銹
