最新英语美文背诵文选100篇

英语美文背诵文选100篇
1. The First Snow
The first snow came. How beautiful it was, falling so silently all day long, all night long, on the mountains, on the meadows, on the roofs on the living, on the graves of the dead! All white save the river, that marked its course be a winding black line across the landscape; and the leafless tress, that against the leaden sky now revealed more fully the wonderful beauty and intricacies of their branches. What silence, too, came with the snow, and what seclusion! Every sound was muffled, every noise changed to something soft and musical. No more tramping hoofs, no more rattling wheels! Only the chiming of sleigh-bell, beating as swift and merrily as the hearts of children. (118 words)
From Kavanagh
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
2. The Humming-bird
Of all animals being this is the most elegant in form and the most brilliant in colors. The stones and metals polished by our arts are not comparable to this jewel of Nature. She has placed it least in size of the order of birds. "maxime Miranda in minimis." Her masterpiece is this little humming-bird, and upon it she has heaped all the gifts which the other birds may only share. Lightness, rapidity, nimbleness, grace, and rich apparel all belong to this little favorite. The emerald, the ruby, and the topaz gleam upon its dress. It never soils them with the dust of earth, and in its aerial life scarcely touches the turf an instant. Always in the air, flying from flower to flower, it has their freshness as well as their brightness. It lives upon their nectar, and dwells only in the climates where they perennially bloom. (149 words)
From Natural History
By George Louise Buffon
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3. Pines
The pine, placed nearly always among scenes disordered and desolate, bring into them all possible elements of order and precision. Lowland trees may lean to this side and that, though it is but a meadow breeze that bends them or a bank of cowlips from which their trunks lean aslope. But let storm and avalanche do their worst, and let the pine find only a ledge of vertical precipice to cling to, it will nevertheless grow straight. Thrust a rod from its last shoot down the stem; it shall point to the center of the earth as long as the tree lives. It may be well also for lowland branches to reach hither and thither for what they need, and to take all kinds of irregular shape and extension. But the pine is trained to need nothing and endure everything. It is resolvedly whole, self-contained, desiring nothing but rightness, content with restricted completion. Tall or short, it will be straight. (160 words)
From Modern Painters
By John Ruskin
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4. Reading Good Books
Devote some of your leisure, I repeat, to cultivating a love of reading good books. Fortunate indeed are those who contrive to make themselves genuine book-lovers. For book lovers have some noteworthy advantages over other people. They need never know lonely hours so long as
they have books around them, and the better the books the more delightful the company. From good books, moreover, they draw much besides entertainment. They gain mental food such as few companions can supply. Even while resting from their labors they are, through the books they read, equipping themselves to perform those labors more efficiently. This albeit they may not be deliberately reading to improve their mind. All unconsciously the ideas they derive from the printed paged are stored up, to be worked over by the imagination for future profit.
(135 words)
From Self-Development
By Henry Addington Bruce
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5. On Etiquette
Etiquette to society is what apparel is to the individual. Without apparel men would go in shameful nudity which would surely lead to the corruption of morals; and without etiquette society would be in a pitiable state and the necessary intercourse between its members would be interfered with by needless offences and troubles. If society were a train, the etiquette would be the rails along which only the train could rumble forth; if society were a state coach, the etiquette would be the wheels and axis on which only the coach could roll forward. The lack of proprieties would make the most intimate friends turns to be the most decided enemies and the friendly or allied countries declare war against each other. We can find many examples in the history of mankind. Therefore I advise you to stand on ceremony before anyone else and to take pains not to do anything against etiquette lest you give offences or make enemies. (160 words)
by William Hazlitt
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6. An Hour Before Sunrise
An hour before sunrise in the city there is an air of cold. Solitary desolation about the noiseless streets, which we are accustomed to see thronged at other times by a busy, eager crowd, and over the quiet, closely shut buildings which throughout the day are warming with life. The drunken, the dissipated, and the criminal have disappeared; the more sober and orderly part of the population have not yet awakened to the labors of the day, and the stillness of death is over streets; its very hue seems to be imparted to them, cold and lifeless as they look in the gray, somber light of daybreak. A partially opened bedroom window here and there bespeaks the heat of the weather and the uneasy slumbers of its occupant; and the dim scanty flicker of a light through the blinds of yonder windows denotes the chamber of watching and sickness. Save for that sad light, the streets present no signs of life, nor the houses of habitation. (166 words)
From Boz
By Charles Dickens
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7. The Importance of Scientific Experiments
The rise of modern science may perhaps be considered to date as far as the time of Roger Bacon, the wonderful monk and philosopher of Oxford, who lived between the years 1214 and 1292. He was probable the first in the middle ages to assert that we must learn science by observing and experimenting on the things around us, and he himself made many remarkable discoveries. Galileo, however who lived more than 300 years later (1564 to 1642), was the greatest of several great men, who in Italy, France, Germany or England, began by degrees to show how many
important truths could be discovered by well-directed observation. Before the time of Galileo, learned men believed that large bodies fall more rapidly towards the earth than small ones, because Aristotle said so. But Galileo, going to the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, let fall two unequal stones, and proved to some friends, whom he had brought there to see his experiment, that Aristotle was in error. It is Galileo's sprit of going direct to Nature, and verifying our opinions and theories by experiment, that has led to all the great discoveries of modern science.
(196 words)
From Logic
By William Stanley Jevons
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8. Address at Gettysburg
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, ca n long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate-we cannot consecrate-we cannot hallow-this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, heave consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that form these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. (268 words)
By Abraham Lincoln
9. A Little Girl (1)
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 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 black. So completely absorbed was shi in watching the cloud to which her strange song or incantation and went towards her. Over her head, high up in the blue, a lark that was soaring towards the same gauzy could was singing, as if in rivalry. 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. (159 words)
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10. A Little Girl (2)
Her eyes, which at one moment seemed blue-gray, at another violet, were shaded by long black lashes, curving backward in a most peculiar way, and these matched in hue her eyebrows, and the tresses that were tossed about her tender throat and 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 the other features, especially the sensitive full-lipped mouth, grew upon me as I stood silently gazing. Here seemed tome 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. (129 words)
(302 words)
From Aylwin
by Theodore Watts-Dunton
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11. Choosing an Occupation
Hodeslea, Eastbourne,
November 5, 1892
Dear Sir,
I am very sorry that the pressure of other occupations has prevented me form sending an earlier reply to your letter.
In my opinion a man's first duty is to find a way of supporting himself, thereby relieving other people of the necessity of supporting him. Moreover, the learning to so work of practical value in the world, in an exact and careful manner, is of itself, a very important education the effects of which make themselves felt in all other pursuits. The habit of doing that which you do not dare about when you would much rather be doing something else, is invaluable. It would have saved me a frightful waste of time if I had ever had it drilled into me in youth.
Success in any scientific career requires an unusual equipment of capacity, industry, and energy. If you possess that equipment, you will find leisure enough after your daily commercial work is over, to make an opening in the scientific ranks for yourself. If you do not, you had better stick to commerce. Nothing is less to be desired than the fate of a young man who, as the Scotch proverb says, in 'trying to make a spoon spoils a horn," and becomes a mere hanger-on in literature or in science, when he might have been a useful and a valuable member of Society in other occupations.
I think that your father ought to see this letter. (244 words)
Yours faithfully
T.H. Huxley
From Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley
By Leonard Huxley
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12. An Important Aspect of College Life
It is perfectly possible to organize the life of our colleges in such a way that students and teachers alike will take part in it; in such a way that a perfectly natural daily intercourse will be established between them; and it is only by such an organization that they can be given real vitality as places of serious training, be made communities in which youngsters will come fully to realize how interesting intellectual work is, how vital, how important, how closely associated with all modern achievement-only by such an organization that study can be made to seem part of life itself. Lectures often seem very formal and empty things; recitations generally proved very dull and unrewarding. It is in conversation and natural intercourse with scholars chiefly that you find how lively knowledge is, how it ties into everything that is interesting and important, how intimate a part it is of every thing that is interesting and important, how intimate a part it is of everything that
is "practical" and connected with the world. Men are not always made thoughtful by books; but they are generally made thoughtful by association with men who think. (195 words)
By Woodrow Wilson
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13. Night (1)
Night has fallen over the country. Through the trees rises the red moon, and the stars are scarcely seen. In the vast shadow of night the coolness and the dews descend. I sit at the open window to enjoy them; and hear only the voice of the summer wind. Like black hulks, the shadows of the great trees ride at anchor on the billowy sea of grass. I cannot see the red and blue flowers, but I know that they are there. Far away in the meadow gleams the silver Charles. The tramp of horses' hoofs sounds from the wooden bridge. Then all is still save the continuous wind or the sound of the neighboring sea. The village clock strikes; and I feel that I am not alone.
(128 words)
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14. Night (2)
How different it is in the city! It is late, and the crowd is gone. You step out upon the balcony, and lie in the very bosom of the cool, dewy night as if you folded her garments about you. Beneath lies the public walk with trees, like a fathomless, black gulf, into whose silent beloved spirit clasped in its embrace. The lamps are still burning up and down the long street. People go by with grotesque shadows, now foreshortened, and now lengthening away into the darkness and vanishing, while a new one springs up behind the walker, and seems to pass him revolving like the sail of a windmill. The iron gates of the park shut with a jangling clang. There are footsteps and loud voices; --a tumult; --a drunken brawl; --an alarm of fire; --then silence again. And now at length the city is asleep, and we can see the night. The belated moon looks over the roofs, and finds no one to welcome her. The moonlight is broken. It lies here and there in the squares, and the opening of the streets-angular like blocks of white marble. (195 words)
(323 words)
By Nathanial Hawthorne
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15. An October Sunrise (1)
I was up the next morning before the October sunrise, and away through the wild and the woodland. The rising of the sun was noble in the cold and warmth of it; peeping down the spread of light, he raised his shoulder heavily over the edge of gray mountain and wavering length of upland. Beneath his gaze the dew-fogs dipped and crept to the hollow places, then stole away in line and column, holding skirts and cling subtly at the sheltering corners where rock hung over grass-land, while the brave lines of the hills came forth, one beyond other gliding.
The woods arose in folds, like drapery of awakened mountains, stately with a depth of awe, and memory of the tempests. Autumn's mellow hand was upon them, as they owned already, touched with gold and red and olive, and their joy towards the sun was less to a bridegroom than a father. (152 words)
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16. An October Sunrise (2)
Yet before the floating impress of the woods could clear itself, suddenly the gladsome light leaped over hill and valley, casting amber, blue, and purple, and a tint of rich red rose, according to the
scene they lit on, and the curtain flung around; yet all alike dispelling fear and the coven hoof of darkness, all on the wings of hope advancing, and proclaiming, "God is here!" Then life and joy sprang reassured from every crouching hollow; every flower and bud and bird had a fluttering sense of them, and all the flashing of God's gaze merged into soft beneficence.
So, perhaps, shall break upon us that eternal morning, when crag and chasm shall be no more, neither hill and valley, nor great unvintaged ocean; when glory shall not scare happiness, neither happiness envy glory; but all things shall arise, and shine in the light of the Father's countenance, because itself is risen. (153 words)
(305 words)
By Richard D. Blackmore
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17. Of Studies (1)
Studies serve for delight, for ornamental, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humour of a scholar. They perfect nature, natural plants, that need proyning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. (157 words)
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18. Of Studies (2)
Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted; others to swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; an if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. (170 words)
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19. Of Studies (3)
Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend. Abeunt studia in mores. Nay there is no stond or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises. Bowling is good for the stone and reins; shooting for the lungs and breast; gentle walking for the stomach; riding for the head; and the like. So if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again. If his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores. If he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one
thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' cases. So every defect of the mind may have a special receipt. (163 words)
(490 words)
By Francis Bacon
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20. Books (1)
The good books of the hour, then, --I do not speak of the bad ones—is simply the useful or pleasant talk of some person whom you cannot otherwise converse with, printed for you. Very useful often, telling you what you need to know; very pleasant often, as a sensible friend's present talk would be. These bright accounts of travels; good-humoured and witty discussion of questions; lively or pathetic story-telling in the form of novel; firm fact-telling, by the real agents concerned in the events of passing history; --all these books of the hour, multiplying among us as education becomes more general, are a peculiar characteristic and possession of the present age: we ought to be entirely thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of them. But we make the worse possible use, if we allow them to usurp the place of true books: for, strictly speaking, they are not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in good print. Our friend's letter may be delightful, or necessary, today: whether worth keeping or not, is to be considered. (189 words)
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21. Books (2)
The newspaper may be entirely proper at breakfast time, but assuredly it is not reading for all day. So though bound up in a volume, the long letter which gives you so pleasant an account of the inns, the roads, and weather last year at such a place, or which tells you that amusing story, or gives you the real circumstances of such and such events, however valuable for occasional reference, may not be, in the real sense of the word, a "book" at all, nor, in the real sense, to be "read". A book is essentially not a talked thing, but a written thing; and written, not with the view of mere communication, but of permanence. The book of talk is printed only because its author cannot speak to thousands of people at once; if he could, he would-the volume is mere multiplication of his voice. You cannot talk to your friend in India; if you could, you would; you write instead: that is mere conveyance of voice. But a book is written, not to multiply the voice merely, not to carry it merely, but to preserve it. (190 words)
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22. Books (3)
The author has something to say which he perceives to be true and useful, or helpfully beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has yet said it; so far as he knows, no one else can say it. He is bound to say it, clearly and melodiously if he may; clearly, at all events. In the sum of his life he finds this to be the thing, or group of things, manifest to him; --this the piece of true knowledge, or sight, which his share of sunshine and earth has permitted him to seize. He would fain set it down for ever; engrave it on rock, if he could; saying, "this is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved and hated, like another; my life was as the vapour, and is not; but this I saw and knew: this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory, " That is his "writing"; it is, in his small human way, and with whatever degree of true inspiration is in him, his inscription, or scripture. That is a "Book". (186 words)
(565 words)
By John Ruskin
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24. The Value of Time (1)
"Time" says the proverb "is money". This means that every moment well spent may put some money into our pockets. If our time is usefully employed, it will either turn out some useful and important piece of work which will fetch its price in the market, or it will add to our experience and increase our capacities so as to enable us to earn money when the proper opportunity comes. There can thus be no doubt that time is convertible into money. Let those who think nothing of wasting time, remember this; let them remember that an hour misspent is equivalent to the loss of a bank-note; an that an hour utilized is tantamount to so much silver or gold; and then they will probably think twice before they give their consent to the loss of any part of their time. Moreover, our life is nothing more than our time. To kill time is therefore a form of suicide. We are shocked when we think of death, and we spare no pains, no trouble, and no expense to preserve life. But we are too often indifferent to the loss of an hour or of a day, forgetting that our life is the sum total of the days and of the hours we live. A day of an hour wasted is therefore so much life forfeited. Let us bear this in mind, and waste of time will appear to us in the light of a crime as culpable as suicide itself. (250 words)
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25. The Value of Time (2)
There is a third consideration which will also tend to warn us against loss of time. Our life is a brief span measuring some sixty or seventy years in all, but nearly one half of this has to be spent in sleep; some years have to be spent over our meals; some over dressing and undressing; some in making journeys on land and voyages by sea; some in merry-making, either on our own account or for the sake of others; some in celebrating religious and social festivities; some in watching over the sick-beds of our nearest and dearest relatives. Now if all these years were to be deducted from the tern over which our life extends we shall find about fifteen or twenty years at our disposal for active work. Whoever remembers this can never willingly waste a single moment of his life. "It is astonishing" says Lord Chesterfield "that anyone can squander away in absolute idleness one single moment of that portion of time which is allotted to us in this world. Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it!" (187 words)
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26. The Value of Time (3)
All time is precious; but the time of our childhood and of our youth is more precious than any other portion of our existence. For those are the periods when alone we can acquire knowledge and develop our faculties and capacities. If we allow these morning hours of life to slip away unutilized, we shall never be able to recoup the loss. As we grow older, our power of acquisition gets blunted, so that the art or science which is not acquired in childhood or youth will never be acquired at all. Just as money laid out at interest doubles and trebles itself in time, so the precious hours of childhood and youth, if properly used, will yield us incalculable advantages. "Every moment you lose" says Lord Chesterfield "is so much character and advantage lost; as on the other hand, every moment you now employ usefully is so much time wisely laid out at prodigious interest."
A proper employment of time is of great benefit to us from a moral point of view. Idleness is justly said to be the rust of the mind and an idle brain is said to be Satan's workshop. It is mostly when
you do not know what to do with yourself that you do something ill or wrong. The mind of the idler preys upon itself. As Watt has said:
In works of labour or of skill
Let me be busy too;
For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do. (249 words
(686 words)
By Robert William Service
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27. Spring The Resurrection Time
Springs are not always the same, In some years, April bursts upon our Virginia hills in one prodigious leap—and all the stage is filled at once, whole choruses of tulips, arabesques of forsythia, cadenzas of flowering plum. The trees grow leaves overnight.
In other years, spring tiptoes in. It pauses, overcome by shyness, like my grandchild at the door, peeping in, ducking out of sight, giggling in the hallway. "I know you're out there," I cry. "Come in!" And April slips into arms.
The dogwood bud, pale green, is inlaid with russet markings. With in the perfect cup a score of clustered seeds are nestled. Once examined the bud in awe: Where were those seeds a month ago The apples display their milliner's scraps of ivory silk, rose-tinged. All the sleeping things wake up-primrose, baby iris, blue phlox. The earth warms-you can smell it, feel it, crumble April in your hands.
The dark Blue Mountains in which I dwell, great-hipped, big-breasted, slumber on the western sky. And then they stretch and gradually awaken. A warm wind, soft as a girl's hair, moves sailboat clouds in gentle skies. The rain come-good rains to sleep by-and fields that were dun as oatmeal turn to pale green, then to Kelly green.
All this reminds me of a theme that runs through my head like a line of music. Its message is profoundly simple, and profoundly mysterious also: Life goes on. That is all there is to it. Everything that is, was; and everything that is, will be. (259 words)
by James J. Kilpatrick
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27. Spell of the Rising Moon
As the moon lifted off the ridge it gathered firmness and authority. Its complexion changed from red, to orange, to gold, to impassive yellow. It seemed to draw light out of the darkening earth, for as it rose, the hills and valleys below grew dimmer. By the time the moon stood clear of the horizon, full chested and round and the color of ivory, the valley were deep shadows in the landscape. The dogs, reassured that this was the familiar moon, stopped barking.
The drama took an hour. Moonrise is slow and serried with subtleties. To watch it, we must slip into an older, more patient sense of time. To watch the moon move inexorably higher is to find an unusual stillness within ourselves. Our imaginations become aware of the vast distances of space, the immensity of the earth and the huge improbability of our own existence. We feel small but privileged.
Moonlight shows us none of life's harder edges. Hillsides seem silken and silvery, the oceans still and blue in its light. In moonlight we become less calculating, more drawn to our feelings.
(184 words)。