英语长篇文章

众所周知，阅读作为人类汲取知识的主要手段和认知世界的主要途径之一，一度成为语文、外语等文科类学科学习的主要方式，而倍受关注和青睐。下面是我带来的英语长篇 文章 阅读，欢迎阅读!

英语长篇文章阅读1

寒武纪大爆发 动物王国出现

Science and technology

The Cambrian explosion

Kingdom come

Chinese palaeontologists hope to explain the rise of the animals

AMONG the mysteries of evolution, one of the most profound is what exactly happened at the beginning of the Cambrian period.

Before that period, which started 541m years ago and ran on for 56m years, life was a modest thing.

Bacteria had been around for about 3 billion years, but for most of this time they had had the Earth to themselves.

Seaweeds, jellyfish-like creatures, sponges and the odd worm do start to put in an appearance a few million years before the Cambrian begins.

But red in tooth and claw the Precambrian was not—for neither teeth nor claws existed.

Then, in the 20m-year blink of a geological eye, animals arrived in force.

Most of the main groups of the animal kingdom—arthropods, brachiopods, coelenterates, echinoderms, molluscs and even chordates, the branch from which vertebrates went on to develop—are found in the fossil beds of the Cambrian.

The sudden evolution of this megafauna is known as the Cambrian explosion.

But two centuries after it was noticed, in the mountains of Wales after which the Cambrian period is named, nobody knows what detonated it.

A group of Chinese scientists, led by Zhu Maoyan of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, plan to change that with a project called “From the Snowball Earth to the Cambrian explosion: the evolution of life and environment 600m years ago”.

The “Snowball Earth” refers to a series of ice ages that happened between 725m and 541m years ago.

These were, at their maxima, among the most extensive glaciations in the Earth’s history.

They alternated, though, with periods that make the modern tropics seem chilly: the planet’s average temperature was sometimes as high as 50C.

Add the fact that a supercontinent was breaking up at this time, and you have a picture of a world in chaos.

Just the sort of thing that might drive evolution.

Dr Zhu and his colleagues hope to find out exactly how these environmental changes correspond to changes in the fossil record.

The animals’ carnival

Fortunately, China’s fossil record for this period is rich.

Until recently, the only known fossils of Precambrian animals were what is called the Ediacaran fauna—a handful of strange creatures found in Australia, Canada and the English Midlands that lived in the Ediacaran period, between 635m and 541m years ago, and which bear little resemblance to what came afterwards.

In 1998, however, a team led by Chen Junyuan, also of the Nanjing Institute, and another led by Xiao Shuhai of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, in America, discovered a 580m-year-old Lagersttte—a place where fossils are particularly well preserved—in a geological formation called the Doushantuo, which spreads out across southern China.

Portents of the modern world

This Lagersttte has yielded many previously unknown species, including microscopic sponges, small tubular organisms of unknown nature, things that look like jellyfish but might not be and a range of what appear to be embryos that show bilateral symmetry.

What these embryos would have grown into is unclear. But some might be the ancestors of the Cambrian megafauna.

To try to link the evolution of these species with changes in the environment, Chu Xuelei of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics in Beijing and his colleagues have been looking at carbon isotopes in the Doushantuo rocks.

They have found that the proportion of 12C—a light isotope of carbon that is more easily incorporated by living organisms into organic matter than its heavy cousin, 13C—increased on at least three occasions during the Ediacaran period.

They suggest these increases mark moments when the amount of oxygen in seawater went up, because more oxygen would mean more oxidisation of buried organic matter. That would liberate its 12C, for incorporation into rocks.

Each of Dr Chu’s oxidation events corresponds with an increase in the size, complexity and diversity of life, both plant and animal.

What triggered what, however, is unclear.

There may have been an increase in photosynthesis because there were more algae around.

Or eroded material from newly formed mountains may have buried organic matter that would otherwise have reacted with oxygen, leading to a build-up of the gas.

The last—and most dramatic—rise in oxygen took place towards the end of the Ediacaran.

Follow-up work by Dr Zhu, in nine other sections of the Doushantuo formation, suggests this surge started just after the final Precambrian glacial period about 560m years ago, and went on for 9m years.

These dates overlap with those of signs of oxidation found in rocks in other parts of the world, confirming that whatever was going on affected the entire planet.

Dr Zhu suspects this global environmental shift propelled the evolution of complex animals.

Dr Zhu also plans to push back before the Ediacaran period.

Other researchers have found fossils of algae and wormlike creatures in rocks in northern China that pre-date the end of the Marinoan glaciation, 635m years ago, which marks the boundary between the Ediacaran and the Cryogenian period that precedes it.

Such fossils are hard to study, so Dr Zhu will use new imaging technologies that can look at them without having to clean away the surrounding rock, and are also able to detect traces of fossil organic matter invisible to the eye.

Besides digging back before the Ediacaran, the new project’s researchers also intend to analyse the unfolding of the Cambrian explosion itself by taking advantage of other Lagersttten—for China has several that date from the Cambrian.

Dr Chen, indeed, first made his name in 1984, when he excavated one at Chengjiang in Yunnan province.

It dates from 525m years ago, which make it 20m years older than the most famous CambrianLagersttte in the West, the Burgess shale of British Columbia, in Canada.

The project’s researchers plan to see how, evolutionarily speaking, the various Lagerst?tten relate to one another, to try to determine exactly when different groups of organisms emerged.

They will also look at the chemistry of elements other than carbon and oxygen—particularly nitrogen and phosphorous, which are essential to life, and sulphur, which often indicates the absence of oxygen and is thus antithetical to much animal life.

Dr Zhu hopes to map changes in the distribution of these chemicals across time and space.

He will assess how these changes correlate, whether they are related to weathering, mountain building and the ebb and flow of glaciers, how they could have affected the evolution of life, and how plants and animals might themselves have altered the chemistry of air and sea.

Most ambitiously, Dr Zhu, Dr Xiao and their colleagues hope to drill right through several fossiliferous sites in southern China where Ediacaran rocks turn seamlessly into Cambrian ones.

Such places are valuable because in most parts of the world there is a gap, known as an unconformity, between the Ediacaran and the Cambrian.

Unconformities are places where rocks have been eroded before new ones are deposited, and the widespread Ediacaran-Cambrian unconformity has been a big obstacle to understanding the Cambrian explosion.

With luck, then, a mystery first noticed in the Welsh mountains in the early 19th century will be solved in the Chinese ones in the early 21st.

If it is, the origin of the animal kingdom will have become clear, and an important gap in the history of humanity itself will have been filled.

英语长篇文章阅读2

巴西水资源 无水可喝

Water in Brazil

Nor any drop to drink

Dry weather and a growing population spell rationing

BRAZIL has the world's biggest reserves of fresh water. That most of it sits in the sparsely populated Amazon has not historically stopped Brazilians in the drier, more populous south taking it for granted. No longer. Landlords in S?o Paulo, who are wont to hose down pavements with gallons of potable water, have taken to using brooms instead. Notices in lifts and on the metro implore paulistanos to take shorter showers and re-use coffee mugs.

S?o Paulo state, home to one-fifth of Brazil's population and one-third of its economic activity, is suffering the worst drought since records began in 1930. Pitiful rainfall and high rates of evaporation in scorching heat have caused the volume of water stored in the Cantareira system of reservoirs, which supplies 10m people, to dip below 12% of capacity. This time last year, at the end of what is nominally the wet season, it stood at 64%.

On April 21st the governor, Geraldo Alckmin, warned that from May consumers will be fined for increasing their water use. Those who cut consumption are already rewarded with discounts on their bills. The city will tap three basins supplying other parts of the state, but since these reservoirs have also been hit by drought and supply hydropower plants, fears of blackouts are rising.

Without a downpour, Sabesp, the state water utility, expects Cantareira's levels to sink beneath the pipes which link reservoirs to consumers a week after S?o Paulo hosts the opening game of the football World Cup on June 12th. To tide the city over until rains resume in November, it is installing kit to pump half of the 400 billion litres of reserves beneath the pipes, at a cost of 80m reais. The company says this “dead volume”, never before used, is perfectly treatable. Some experts have expressed concerns about its quality.

Mr Alckmin has not ruled out tightening the spigots. Flow from taps in parts of S?o Paulo has already become a trickle, for which Sabesp blames maintenance work. Widespread cuts could hurt the governor's re-election bid in October. Hours after he announced the latest measures, a thirsty mob set fire to a bus.

Paulistanos use more water than most Brazilians, but lose less of it to leaks: 35%, compared with a national average of 39%. Sabesp, listed on the New York Stock Exchange but majority-owned by the state government, is a paragon of good governance, says John Briscoe, a water expert at Harvard and a former head of the World Bank mission in Brazil.

The problem exposed by the drought is that supply has not kept pace with the rising urban population. Facing a jumble of overlapping municipal, state and federal regulations, investment in storage, distribution and treatment has lagged behind. And not just in S?o Paulo; the national water regulator has warned that 16 projects in the ten biggest cities must be completed by 2015 to prevent chronic water shortages over the next decade. So far only five are finished; work on some has not begun. Short-term measures should keep the water trickling for now. But the well of temporary solutions will eventually run dry.

英语长篇文章阅读3

德国公司的管理 董事会的多元化

Business

Corporate governance in Germany

Diversifying the board

German boards have long been cosy men's clubs. But things are changing

HERMANN JOSEF ABS liked to joke, What's the difference between a doghouse and the supervisory board?

The doghouse is for the dog; the supervisory board is for the cat.

For those unfamiliar with the nuances of German humour, for the cat is slang for something like trash.

The late banker would know: while running Deutsche Bank from 1957 to 1967, he also sat on dozens of supervisory boards.

This was the peak of Deutschland AG, a clique of long-serving bosses, autocratic chairmen, do-nothing board members and their financier friends.

Big German companies' supervisory boards are supposed to act as a check on their management boards.

But in practice their relations were too cosy for this.

This past year the stumbles of two titans seemed to highlight how much corporate power is still concentrated in few hands in the Germanspeaking world.

As 2013 began Gerhard Cromme was chairman of the supervisory boards of both Siemens, an industrial conglomerate, and ThyssenKrupp, a steelmaker.

But big losses at foreign mills and heavy fines over a cartel case cost him the chairmanship at ThyssenKrupp.

Then in July, a boardroom bunfight at Siemens ended with the departure of Peter Lscher, the chief executive.

Mr Cromme belatedly called for his firing—but only after hiring him and protecting him for years.

Josef Ackermann, a Swiss former boss of Deutsche Bank and a Siemens board member, had defended Mr Lscher.

When Mr Lscher went, so did he.

Shortly before this he had quit as chairman of Zurich, a Swiss insurer, whose chief financial officer had committed suicide, leaving a note berating Mr Ackermann.

Now he has no big corporate job, there have been reports that Mr Ackermann may have to step down as a trustee of the World Economic Forum after its gabfest in Davos this week.

At first glance, corporate power in Germany still looks male, German and concentrated.

But its boardrooms are slowly getting more diverse.

In 2003 the average supervisory-board member at a public company sat on boards; now the figure is .

A 2001 cut in tax on sales of shares let banks and insurance companies, which played big roles as lenders and part-owners, start disentangling themselves from companies.

Into the gaps, and onto the boards, has come a new generation of more active members.

Boards have little choice but to be sharper, says Christoph Schalast of Frankfurt School of Finance and Management.

Many companies are now paying fines and settlements for their behaviour before the financial crisis.

A 2010 change in the law doubled the statute of limitations for such misdeeds to ten years.

Progress on making boards more international is slower.

Eight of the largest 30 public companies have foreign bosses, but the rest of their boards' members are predominantly German, even at the country's most multinational firms.

But Burkhard Schwenker, the boss of Roland Berger, a consulting firm, says that counting passports is simplistic: what matters more is international experience, which German firms increasingly look for when recruiting both management-and supervisory-board members.

If boards are becoming more professional and diverse, is accumulation of board seats a bad thing in itself?

Jrg Rocholl, the president of the European School for Management and Technology, says that studies disagree on whether busy board members are better or worse for profits.

But he agrees that boards are becoming more capable, and says this has been a factor in Germany's economic revival.

Pay for German board members is going up; but these days, members are earning it.

在日常生活或是工作学习中，大家都跟作文打过交道吧，借助作文可以提高我们的语言组织能力。你知道作文怎样才能写的'好吗？以下是我帮大家整理的初一英语长作文范文初一长篇英语文章，仅供参考，希望能够帮助到大家。 Olympic Games is window, I keep watch. This is a maximum window, had been rubbed bright. Through it, those that see are , it is changing every day, here burgeoning thing is being replaced. Have only me, this loyalty keep watch, it is paying attention to it every day, hopes to know it more. Olympic Games is crossing, I am pedestrian. There are many persons who pass here every day, there is Asian, have European, there is old person, have child. Here is traffic fort, joins the friend of all corners of the country. I pass the one of persons of hundreds of millions of here merely, cross it, go to another world. Olympic Games is Holy Land, I am volunteer. This is the land with pure flat, has holy fire from start to finish to accompany in side. Just because it is so, I pay out voluntarily for it, I will let my strength, let this slice of land more clean, let more ones know it, is also willing to devote oneself to it as me. I still help to the person who comes to here, let them enjoy the happiness of this slice of Holy Land. Olympic Games is platform, I am host. It has put up platform for us , lets world know us; It has built bridge for us , lets us and world link up better. This platform may let us display self wantonly. I am the host of here, I am proud to be the host of here. I will let the friendship of landlord, let guest experience enthusiasm and happiness.

"人不可以选择出身，但可以改变命运。"这是倪振年常说的一句给他人励志的话。下面我整理了英语长篇励志美文，希望大家喜欢!英语长篇励志美文摘抄 My Father’S Evening Star 父亲的金星 by William O. Douglas 威廉.奥维尔.道格拉斯 During moments of sadness or frustration, I often think of a family scene years ago in the town of Yakima, Washington. I was about seven or eight years old at the time. Father had died a few years earlier. Mother was sitting in the living room talking to me, telling me what a wonderful man Father was. 悲伤或受挫的时候，我常常想起几年前在华盛顿州亚基马城家中的一幕。那时我大约七八岁，父亲几年前去世了，母亲坐在客厅里向我描述父亲是多么了不起。 She told me of his last illness and death. She told me of his departure from Cleveland, Washington, to Portland, Oregon, for what proved to be a fatal operation. His last words to her were these: “If I die it will be glory, if I live it will be grace.” 她讲到他最后一次生病去世的情景，讲到他在离开华盛顿州的克利夫兰赶往俄勒冈州的波特兰做手术，正是这次手术要了他的命。临终前，父亲对母亲说：“我死了，是天国的荣耀;我活着，是上帝的恩惠。” I remember how those words puzzled me. I could not understand why it would be glory to die. It would be glory to live, that I could understand. But why it would be glory to die was something I did not understand until later. 我记得那些话曾让我多么困惑，因为我无法理解死亡为什么是一种荣耀。活着是一种荣耀倒还可以理解，但为什么死了会是一种荣耀，我直到后来才明白。 Then one day in a moment of great crisis I came to understand the words of my father. “If I die it will be glory, if I live it will be grace.” That was his evening star. The faith in a power greater than man. That was the faith of our fathers. 有一天在危急关头，我终于领悟了父亲的遗言。“我死了，是天国的荣耀;我活着，是上帝的恩惠。”那是他的金星，即信仰一种比人类更伟大的力量，这也是我们祖先的信仰 A belief in a God who controlled man in the universe, that manifested itself in different ways to different people. It was written by scholars and learned men in dozens of different creeds. But riding high above all secular controversies was a faith in One who was the Creator, the Giver of Life, the Omnipotent. 相信上帝主宰宇宙中的人类，并以各种方式向形形色色的人证实自身的存在。学者和有学问的人在各种信条中曾予以记载，而让人在一切世俗论战中获得成功的秘诀是相信上帝创造了世界和生命，是无所不能的神。 Man’s age-long effort has been to be free. Throughout time he has struggled against some form of tyranny that would enslave his mind or his body. So far in this century, three epidemics of it have been let loose in the world. 人类长久以来努力为自由而奋斗，不断与某种奴役其身心的独裁形式作斗争。半个世纪已经爆发了三次由独裁滋生的传染病。 We can keep our freedom through the increasing crisis of history only if we are self-reliant enough to be free—dollars, guns, and all the wondrous products of science and the machine will not be enough. “This night thy soul shall be required of thee.” 只有当我们能自立，足以享有自由时，才能在历史上不断升级的危机中牢牢地把握自由——金钱、武器、科学和机器制造的所有令人叹为观止的产品都不足以保障我们的自由。“今夜必要你的灵魂。” These days I see America identified more and more with material things, less and less with spiritual standards. 这些日子我发觉美国越来越沉溺于物质享受，却越来越疏离于道德标准 These days I see America drifting from the Christian faith, acting abroad as an arrogant, selfish, greedy nation, interested only in guns and dollars, not in people and their hopes and aspirations. 这些日子我眼见美国偏离____的信仰，在海外的所作所为使其沦为一个傲慢、自私、贪婪、只对武器和金钱感兴趣的国家……而不关注国民及其希望与追求 These days the words of my father come back to me more and more. We need his faith, the faith of our fathers. We need a faith that dedicates us to something bigger and more important than ourselves or our possessions. Only if we have that faith will we be able to guide the destiny of nations, in this the most critical period of world history. 这些日子我越来越回想起父亲的话。我们需要他那样的信仰，我们祖先的信仰;我们需要一种信仰鞭策自己投身于比发展自身与积聚私产更重要的事业。只有具备这种信仰，我们才能在世界历史最关键的时期决定国家的命运。 英语长篇励志美文鉴赏 What Does God Say to Me? 上帝对我说了什么? by Dame Edith Evans 伊迪丝.埃文斯夫人 I believe that good is stronger than evil. I have found that if applied with complete faith, it can obliterate evil. 我相信善可以压倒恶，并发现如果我们完全相信善的力量，便能以善除恶。 Knowledge like this gives one great strength in time of oppression or tyranny. I believe that hatred is destructive. It is not always easy or possible to love people, nations, or ideas, but at least, I say to myself, Do not hate them: try to turn thoughts toward God. Someone once said, “It is better to love the good than hate the bad.” 这样的认识在压迫和暴政时期给人巨大的力量。我相信仇恨有毁灭性的力量，热爱人民、民族或思想总是不容易或不可能，但至少我劝诫自己：“别恨他们，努力把思绪转向上帝。”有人曾说：“与其憎恶，不如扬善。” I have all of my share of the artist’s temperament, and one of our faults is that we think people are being unfair to us, or that we are suffering from other people’s jealousy — the persecution complex, in fact. The one and only way in which I have been able to clear this away is to turn my mind and thoughts to good and to God. I say, Never mind what he or she or they say, what does God say to me? Where does my life come from? Who is the source of all my qualities, and can anything prevent those qualities from being used? 我拥有艺术家的禀赋，而艺术家的缺点之一是认为自己受的待遇不公，或者苦于遭受他人嫉妒。这实际上是一种受迫害情结。而我能摆脱这种情结困扰的一种也是唯一的一种 方法 是将心灵和思想转向从善和信仰上帝。我告诫自己：“别介意他人说什么，上帝对我说了什么?我的生命从何而来?谁赐予我所有的优点——有什么能阻挡我发挥那些优点?” I believe, today, that a great flood of good would be released in the world if all of us concentrated upon following the simple commands of Christ: “Love God first, and your neighbor as yourself.” As “yourself,” I try to remember. So if I think kindly of myself, then I think kindly of my neighbor. When Christ was asked, “Who is my neighbor?” what did He say? He told the story of the Samaritan. 今天我相信，如果我们所有人都一心一意遵循耶稣质朴的教导——“首先爱上帝，然后像爱自己一样爱你的邻居”，世界便会善举如潮。我努力记住“像爱你自己一样”。所以，如果我好好为自己着想，就会好好为邻里着想。有人问耶稣：“谁是我的邻居”时，他怎么回答呢?他讲述了撒马利亚人救助落难的陌生人的 故事 。 People are always demanding of us British, “Don’t you dislike Americans?” And conversely to you Americans, “Don’t you dislike the British?” I can’t bear classing people together nationally, and liking or disliking them. People are people wherever you meet them. They are all the children of the one God. 人们总是要求我们英国人回答：“难道你们不喜欢美国人吗?”反过来问美国人：“难道你们不喜欢英国人吗?”我无法接受按国籍划分人，然后决定喜欢还是厌恶他们。不管你身在何处，遇见的人都是一样的，都是同一个上帝的孩子。 I have been asked how I felt in the Blitz. Most of the time, I was in London, terribly excited by fear. But the only way I could keep going about my work at all was by constantly assuring myself that the all-powerful God would take care of me. 有人问我闪击战期间的感受。大多数时候我在伦敦，由于恐惧而特别激动，但让我能继续工作的唯一办法根本上说就是不断让自己确信，全能的上帝会眷顾我。 On looking round the world today, one is impressed by the amount of fear that is expressed by everybody: fear of war, fear of ill health, fear of not being able to hold a job, fear of people getting ahead of you, fear of losing opportunity; fear of losing friends, lovers, advantages; fear of death. 环顾当今的现实世界，我们深感每一个人受着许多恐惧的折磨;害怕战争，害怕疾病，害怕失业，害怕落后，害怕丧失机会，害怕失去朋友、心上人、优势，害怕死亡。 We are constantly reading articles, and hearing speeches, where the writers and the speakers tell us that we must cease being so material. But what most of us want to know is how? If a busy man at his office is faced with a seemingly insuperable problem, how is he to solve this problem by other than material means? 我们经常读 文章 、听演讲，那些作者和演讲者提醒我们必须停止如此沉湎于物质追求。但我们大多数人想知道的是该怎么停止。如果一个在办公室忙碌的人碰到一个似乎无法克服的困难，该如何通过非物质手段解决呢? But, of course, the answer is so simple. Like Naaman, who said, “Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?” we tend to disregard is always to turn our thoughts immediately, and with absolute confidence, away from the difficulty, and if, as I said at the beginning, one believes in the power of good, one must quietly know that the power of good will give all the right answers to the problem, even if the answer is required within a few minutes or half an hour. 当然答案很简单，正如乃缦所言：“大马士革的河亚罢拿和法珥法，岂不比以色列的一切水更好吗?”我们常常忽略了这一点，常常把思绪万分自信地立即从困难转移开。倘若如我在开始所说，人们相信善的力量，就必须明白，善的力量会恰当地解决这个问题，即使需要在几分钟或半小时之内解决它。 And when I say these things, I say them because I have proved them. In fact, throughout the ups and downs of my theatrical life, if I had not had some simple code — because I am not a highly intellectual woman — I should not be doing happily and successfully the work that I love 我谈论这些事情，是因为我已见证过这些事。实际上，我并非一个智商很高的女人，我的戏剧生涯充满了挫折，要不是我相信一种简单的信条，我决不会如此快乐地从事自己热爱的工作并获得成功。 英语长篇励志美文赏析 Spiritual Handholds on Life 生命的精神支撑 by Dr. Fred Dow Fagg, JR 小弗雷德.道.法格博士 The view of the high Sierra Lake, nestled in the snow and rock slightly below the timber line, was beautiful from my vantage point some five hundred feet above its shimmering surface. 坐落在高山上的谢拉湖，依偎在积雪与岩石的怀抱中，岩层往上是一片森林。从高出湖面约500英尺的观景点看下去，湖面微波荡漾，美不胜收。 I was anxious to rejoin my companions and try the fishing before are afternoon shadow - edging out from the surrounding array of peaks - entirely covered the lake. 我着急与同伴再次会合，准备在午后周围群山的阴影尚未笼罩全湖之前，一起钓鱼。离错层的页岩不远，便是一条通往山谷的蜿蜒小路。 Just a short distance beyond the intervening shale, the trail zigzagged down to the valley. I disliked the thought of returning by the long, tedious trail I had ascended, and decided to chance the shale - even though part of it lay above a sheer drop-off of several hundred feet. 我不想再走上山时所走的那条漫长而乏味的小道，便决定试着走上页岩——虽然这其中一段路的下面是几百英尺的垂直峭壁。 I started working my way over the loose rock with considerable caution and had covered about half the distance when I became aware of a slight but persistent yielding of the shale under my feet. 我小心翼翼地走在松动的页岩上。大约走到一半时，我发现脚下的页岩正一点点地不断下滑。我急忙寻找可以抓住的东西。我向前一扑，抓住了一块露出地表的坚硬岩石。 Desperately, I looked for something that would offer support and lurched forward to grasp a light outcropping of solid rock just as the surface shale underfoot - loosened from its foundation by the warm noonday sun - cascaded downward and disappeared over the cliff. Several seconds passed before I heard it rattle into the lake. 就在这时，脚下被午后阳光照射的发热的页岩表层开始松动，从山上滑了下去，消失在峭壁上。几秒钟后，我听到它落进湖中的声音。稍微考虑了一下抄近路这愚蠢行为的后果后，我想办法从一个支撑点挪到另一个支撑点 Finally - after due consideration of the folly of short cuts - I managed to move from handhold to handhold and, at last, pulled myself to the trail by the aid of a dwarf juniper root. I have forgotten how many trout I caught that afternoon, but I have not forgotten the value of handhold. 最终借助一棵矮松的根将自己拉到小路上。那天下午钓了多少鲑鱼，我已经不记得了，但我绝对忘不了支撑点的重要性。 Handholds are needed also during the course of everyday life. They provide security when the things we depend upon seem to be slipping out from under us. What are the spiritual handholds I have found to be most value? 在日常生活中，支撑点也是非常重要的。当我们的依靠即将从脚下溜走时，支撑点会带给我们安全的保障。我发现的最有价值的精神支撑是什么呢? First, the teachings of the humble carpenter of Nazareth - for their insistence on the supreme worth of the individual, for their stressing of the significance of sympathetic understanding, and for their unsurpassed evidence of dauntless faith. 首先，是拿撒勒卑微的木匠的教诲——他坚决主张个人价值至上，强调同情与理解的重要性，并为坚定的信仰提供了无可厚非的证明。 Second, the conviction that, while every person should delight in making a courageous and self-reliant effort to live up to his capabilities, there are well-springs of power outside himself that can be tapped - if he will avail himself of them. 其次，尽管我们每个人都应该乐于勇敢、独立地发挥自己的能力，但也要相信，只要我们愿意，我们也能从外界获得力量之源。 Third, that the nature of this world and of the people in it is determined more by our individual vision, understanding and conduct than by any material environmental factors, and that - in other words - nothing will produce the good world but the good man. 再次，除了物质环境因素外，世界和人类的本质更多的是取决于我们个人的视野、理解和行为。也就是说，唯有出色的人才能创造出美好的世界。 These are the principal spiritual handholds I have found to possess enduring value. They offer both an exciting challenge and a calm assurance. They are the things I believe. 这些便是我所发现的精神支撑点，它们具有永恒的价值。它们给予我们的不仅是刺激的挑战，还有令人安心的承诺。这就是我信仰的一切。