新编英语教育材料6课文课本原文.doc

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1、#+Unit OneTEXT ITwo Words to Avoid, Two to RememberArthur Gordon1Nothing in life is more exciting and rewarding than the sudden flash of insight that leaves you a changed person not only changed, but changed for the better. Such moments are rare, certainly, but they come to all of us. Sometimes from

2、 a book, a sermon, a line of poetry. Sometimes from a friend.2 That wintry afternoon in Manhattan, waiting in the little French restaurant, I was feeling frustrated and depressed. Because of several miscalculations on my part, a project of considerable importance in my life had fallen through. Even

3、the prospect of seeing a dear friend (the Old Man, as I privately and affectionately thought of him) failed to cheer me as it usually did. I sat there frowning at the checkered tablecloth, chewing the bitter cud of hindsight.3He came across the street, finally, muffled in his ancient overcoat, shape

4、less felt hat pulled down over his bald head, looking more like an energetic gnome than an eminent psychiatrist. His offices were nearby; I knew he had just left his last patient of the day. He was close to 80, but he still carried a full case load, still acted as director of a large foundation, sti

5、ll loved to escape to the golf course whenever he could.4By the time he came over and sat beside me, the waiter had brought his invariable bottle of ale. I had not seen him for several months, but he seemed as indestructible as ever. “Well, young man,” he said without preliminary, “whats troubling y

6、ou?”5I had long since ceased to be surprised at his perceptiveness. So I proceeded to tell him, at some length, just what was bothering me. With a kind of melancholy pride, I tried to be very honest. I blamed no one else for my disappointment, only myself. I analyzed the whole thing, all the bad jud

7、gments, the false moves. I went on for perhaps 15 minutes, while the Old Man sipped his ale in silence.6When I finished, he put down his glass. “Come on,” he said. “Lets go back to my office.”7“Your office? Did you forget something?”8“No,” he said mildly. “I want your reaction to something. Thats al

8、l.”9A chill rain was beginning to fall outside, but his office was warm and comfortable and familiar: book-lined walls, long leather couch, signed photograph of Sigmund Freud, tape recorder by the window. His secretary had gone home. We were alone.10The Old Man took a tape from a flat cardboard box

9、and fitted it onto the machine. “On this tape,” he said, “are three short recordings made by three persons who came to me for help. They are not identified, of course. I want you to listen to the recordings and see if you can pick out the two-word phrase that is the common denominator in all three c

10、ases.” He smiled. “Dont look so puzzled. I have my reasons.”11What the owners of the voices on the tape had in common, it seemed to me, was unhappiness. The man who spoke first evidently had suffered some kind of business loss or failure; he berated himself for not having worked harder, for not havi

11、ng looked ahead. The woman who spoke next had never married because of a sense of obligation to her widowed mother; she recalled bitterly all the marital chances she had let go by. The third voice belonged to a mother whose teen-age son was in trouble with the police; she blamed herself endlessly.12

12、The Old Man switched off the machine and leaned back in his chair. “Six times in those recordings a phrase is used thats full of subtle poison. Did you spot it? No? Well, perhaps thats because you used it three times yourself down in the restaurant a little while ago.” He picked up the box that had

13、held the tape and tossed it over to me. “There they are, right on the label. The two saddest words in any language.”13I looked down. Printed neatly in red ink were the words: If only.14“Youd be amazed,” said the Old Man, “if you knew how many thousands of times Ive sat in this chair and listened to

14、woeful sentences beginning with those two words. If only, they say to me, I had done it differently or not done it at all. If only I hadnt lost my temper, said the cruel thing, made that dishonest move, told that foolish lie. If only I had been wiser, or more unselfish, or more self-controlled. They

15、 go on and on until I stop them. Sometimes I make them listen to the recordings you just heard. If only, I say to them, youd stop saying if only, we might begin to get somewhere!”15The Old Man stretched out his legs. “The trouble with if only,” he said, “is that it doesnt change anything. It keeps t

16、he person facing the wrong way backward instead of forward. It wastes time. In the end, if you let it become a habit, it can become a real roadblock, an excuse for not trying any more.16“Now take your own case: your plans didnt work out. Why? Because you made certain mistakes. Well, thats all right:

17、 everyone makes mistakes. Mistakes are what we learn from. But when you were telling me about them, lamenting this, regretting that, you werent really learning from them.”17“How do you know?” I said, a bit defensively.18“Because,” said the Old Man, “you never got out of the past tense. Not once did

18、you mention the future. And in a way-be honest, now! you were enjoying it. Theres a perverse streak in all of us that makes us like to hash over old mistakes. After all, when you relate the story of some disaster or disappointment that has happened to you, youre still the chief character, still in t

19、he center of the stage.”19I shook my head ruefully. “Well, whats the remedy?”20“Shift the focus,” said the Old Man promptly. “Change the key words and substitute a phrase that supplies lift instead of creating drag.”21“Do you have such a phrase to recommend?”22“Certainly. Strike out the words if onl

20、y; substitute the phrase next time.”23“Next time?”24“Thats right. Ive seen it work minor miracles right here in this room. As long as a patient keeps saying if only to me, hes in trouble. But when he looks me in the eye and says next time, I know hes on his way to overcoming his problem. It means he

21、 has decided to apply the lessons he has learned from his experience, however grim or painful it may have been. It means hes going to push aside the roadblock of regret, move forward, take action, resume living. Try it yourself. Youll see.”25My old friend stopped speaking. Outside, I could hear the

22、rain whispering against the windowpane. I tried sliding one phrase out of my mind and replacing it with the other. It was fanciful, of course, but I could hear the new words lock into place with an audible click.26The Old Man stood up a bit stiffly. “Well, class dismissed. It has been good to see yo

23、u, young man. Always is. Now, if you will help me find a taxi, I probably should be getting on home.”27We came out of the building into the rainy night. I spotted a cruising cab and ran toward it, but another pedestrian was quicker.28“My, my,” said the Old Man slyly. “If only we had come down ten se

24、conds sooner, wed have caught that cab, wouldnt we?”29I laughed and picked up the cue. “Next time Ill run faster.”30“Thats it,” cried the Old Man, pulling his absurd hat down around his ears. “Thats it exactly!”31Another taxi slowed. I opened the door for him. He smiled and waved as it moved away. I

25、 never saw him again. A month later, he died of sudden heart attack, in full stride, so to speak.32More than a year has passed since that rainy afternoon in Manhattan. But to this day, whenever I find myself thinking “if only”, I change it to “next time”. Then I wait for that almost-perceptible ment

26、al click. And when I hear it, I think of the Old Man.33A small fragment of immortality, to be sure. But its the kind he would have wanted.From: James I. Brown, pp. 146-148.Unit TwoTEXT IThe Fine Art of Putting Things OffMichael Demarest1“Never put off till tomorrow,” exhorted Lord Chesterfield in 17

27、49, “what you can do today.” That the elegant earl never got around to marrying his sons mother and had a bad habit of keeping worthies like Dr. Johnson cooling their heels for hours in an anteroom attests to the fact that even the most well-intentioned men have been postponers ever. Quintus Fabius

28、Maximus, one of the great Roman generals, was dubbed “Cunctator” (Delayer) for putting off battle until the last possible vinum break. Moses pleaded a speech defect to rationalize his reluctance to deliver Jehovahs edict to Pharaoh. Hamlet, of course, raised procrastination to an art form.2The world

29、 is probably about evenly divided between delayers and do-it-nowers. There are those who prepare their income taxes in February, prepay mortgages and serve precisely planned dinners at an ungodly 6:30 p.m. The other half dine happily on leftovers at 9 or 10, misplace bills and file for an extension

30、of the income tax deadline. They seldom pay credit-card bills until the apocalyptic voice of Diners threatens doom from Denver. They postpone, as Faustian encounters, visits to barbershop, dentist or doctor.3Yet for all the trouble procrastination may incur, delay can often inspire and revive a crea

31、tive soul. Jean Kerr, author of many successful novels and plays, says that she reads every soup-can and jam-jar label in her kitchen before settling down to her typewriter. Many a writer focuses on almost anything but his task-for example, on the Coast and Geodetic Survey of Maines Frenchman Bay an

32、d Bar Harbor, stimulating his imagination with names like Googins Ledge, Blunts Pond, Hio Hill and Burnt Porcupine, Long Porcupine, Sheep Porcupine and Bald Porcupine islands.4From Cunctators day until this century, the art of postponement had been virtually a monopoly of the military (“Hurry up and

33、 wait”), diplomacy and the law. In former times, a British proconsul faced with a native uprising could comfortably ruminate about the situation with Singapore Sling in hand. Blessedly, he had no nattering Telex to order in machine guns and fresh troops. A.U.S. general as late as World War II could

34、agree with his enemy counterpart to take a sporting day off, loot the villagers chickens and wine and go back to battle a day later. Lawyers are among the worlds most addicted postponers. According to Frank Nathan, a nonpostponing Beverly Hills insurance salesman, “The number of attorneys who die wi

35、thout a will is amazing.”5Even where there is no will, there is a way. There is a difference, of course, between chronic procrastination and purposeful postponement, particularly in the higher echelons of business. Corporate dynamics encourage the caution that breeds delay, says Richard Manderbach,

36、Bank of America group vice president. He notes that speedy action can be embarrassing or extremely costly. The data explosion fortifies those seeking excuses for inaction another report to be read, another authority to be consulted. “There is always,” says Manderbach, “a delicate edge between having

37、 enough information and too much.”6His point is well taken. Bureaucratization, which flourished amid the growing burdens of government and the great complexity of society, was designed to smother policymakers in blankets of legalism, compromise and reappraisal and thereby prevent hasty decisions fro

38、m being made. The centralization of government that led to Watergate has spread to economic institutions and beyond, making procrastination a worldwide way of life. Many languages are studded with phrases that refer to putting things off from the Spanish manana to the Arabic bukrafil mishmish (liter

39、ally “tomorrow in apricots,” more loosely “leave it for the soft spring weather when the apricots are blooming”).7Academe also takes high honors in procrastination. Bernard Sklar, a University of Southern California sociologist who churns out three to five pages of writing a day, admits that “many o

40、f my friends go through agonies when they face a blank page. There are all sorts of rationalizations: the pressure of teaching, responsibilities at home, checking out the latest book, looking up another footnote.”8Psychologists maintain that the most assiduous procrastinators are women, though many

41、psychologists are (at $50 plus an hour) pretty good delayers themselves. Dr. Ralph Greenson, a U.C.L.A. professor of clinical psychiatry (and Marilyn Monroes onetime shrink), takes a fairly gentle view of procrastination. “To many people,” he says, “doing something, confronting, is the moment of tru

42、th. All frightened people will then avoid the moment of truth entirely, or evade or postpone it until the last possible moment.” To Georgia State Psychologist Joen Fagan, however, procrastination may be a kind of subliminal way of sorting the important from the trivial. “When I drag my feet, theres

43、usually some reason,” says Fagan. “I feel it, but I dont yet know the real reason.”9In fact, there is a long and honorable history of procrastination to suggest that many ideas and decisions may well improve if postponed. It is something of a truism that to put off making a decision is itself a deci

44、sion. The parliamentary process is essentially a system of delay and deliberation. So, for that matter, is the creation of a great painting, or an entre, or a book, or a building like Blenheim Palace, which took the Duck of Marlboroughs architects and laborers 15years to construct. In the process, t

45、he design can mellow and marinate. Indeed, hurry can be the assassin of elegance. As T. H. White, author of Swords in the Stone, once wrote, time “is not meant to be devoured in an hour or a day, but to be consumed delicately and gradually and without haste.” In other words, pace Lord Chesterfield,

46、what you dont necessarily have to do today, by all means put off until tomorrow.From: G. Levin, 4th ed., pp. 429 - 434Unit ThreeTEXT IWalls and BarriersEugene Raskin1My fathers reaction to the bank building at 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City was immediate and definite: “You wont catch

47、me putting my money in there!” he declared. “Not in that glass box!”2Of course, my father is a gentleman of the old school, a member of the generation to whom a good deal of modern architecture is unnerving; but I suspectI more than suspect, I am convincedthat his negative response was not so much t

48、o the architecture as to a violation of his concept of the nature of money.3In his generation money was thought of as a tangible commoditybullion, bank notes, coinsthat could be hefted, carried, or stolen. Consequently, to attract the custom of a sensible man, a bank had to have heavy walls, barred

49、windows, and bronze doors, to affirm the fact, however untrue, that money would be safe inside. If a buildings design made it appear impregnable, the institution was necessarily sound, and the meaning of the heavy wall as an architectural symbol dwelt in the prevailing attitude toward money, rather than in any aesthetic theory.4But that attitude toward money has of course changed. E