经典的文字阅读总能给我们带来诸多的感受，以下是我整理的世界经典短篇英语散文，欢迎参考阅读！
Anonymous
All the wisdom of the ages, all the stories that have delighted mankind for centuries, are easily and cheaply available to all of us within the covers of bo oks but we must know how to avail ourselves of this treasure and how to get the most from it. The most unfortunate people in the world are those who have never discovered how satisfying it is to read good books.
I am most interested in people, in them and finding out about them. Some of the most remarkable people I've met existed only in a writer's imagination, then on the pages of his book, and then, again, in my imagination. I've found in boo ks new friends, new societies, new words.
If I am interested in people, others are interested not so much in who as i n how. Who in the books includes everybody from science fiction superman two hun dred centuries in the future all the way back to the first figures in history. H ow covers everything from the ingenious explanations of Sherlock Holmes to the d iscoveries of science and ways of teaching mannner to children.
Reading is pleasure of the mind, which means that it is a little like a sport: your eagerness and knowledge and quickness make you a good reader. Reading is fun, not because the writer is telling you something, but because it makes your mind work. Your own imagination works along with the author's or even goes beyo nd his. Your experience, compared with his, brings you to the same or different conclusions, and your ideas develop as you understand his.
Every book stands by itself, like a one family house, but books in a librar y are like houses in a city. Although they are separate, together they all add u p to something, they are connected with each other and with other cities. The sa me ideas, or related ones, turn up in different places; the human problems that repeat themselves in life repeat themselves in literature, but with different so lutions according to different writings at different times. Books influence each other; they link the past, the present and the future and have their own genera tions, like families. Wherever you start reading you connect yourself with one o f the families of ideas, and in the long run, you not only find out about the wo rld and the people in it; you find out about yourself, too.
Reading can only be fun if you expect it to be. If you concentrate on books somebody tells you you “ought” to read, you probably won't have fun. But if you put down a book you don't like and try another till you find one that means som ething to you, and then relax with it, you will almost certainly have a good tim e — and if you become, as a result of reading, better, wiser, kinder, or more g entle, you won't have suffered during the process.
John Lubbock
Books are to mankind what memory is to the individual. They contain the hist ory of our race, the discoveries we have made, the accumulated knowledge and exp erience of ages; they picture for us the marvels and beauties of nature; help us in our difficulties, comfort us in sorrow and in suffering, change hours of wea riness into moments of delight, store our minds with ideas, fill them with good and happy thoughts, and lift us out of and above ourselves.
When we read we may not only be kings and live in palaces, but, what is far better, we may transport ourselves to the mountains or the seashore, and visit t he most beautiful parts of the earth, without fatigue, inconvenience, expense. P recious and priceless are the blessing, which the books scatter around our daily paths. We walk, in imagination, with the noblest spirits, through the most subl ime and enchanting regions.
Macaulay had wealth and fame, rank and power, and yet he tells us in his bio graphy that he owed the happiest hours of his life to books. In a charming lette r to a little girl, he says: “If any one would make me the greatest king that e ver lived, with palaces and gardens and fine dinners,and wines and coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of servants, on condition that I should not read books, I would not be a king. I would rather be a poor man in garret with plent y of books than a king who did not love reading.”
Arnold Bennett
The appearance today of the first volume of a new edition of Boswell's Johns on, edited by Augustine Birrell, reminds me once again that I have read but litt le of that work. Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approx imately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and th at not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man, who has read steadily that which he ought to have read 16 hours a day, from early infancy.
I cannot recall a single author of whom I have read everything — even of Ja ne Austen. I have never seen Susan and The Watsons, one of which I have been tol d is superlatively good. Then there are large tracts of Shakespeare, Bacon, Spen ser, nearly all Chaucer, Congreve, Dryden, Pope, Swift, Sterne, Johnson, Scott, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, Edgeworth, Ferrier, Lamb, Leigh Hunt, Wordsworth (nea rly all), Tennyson, Swinbume, and Brontes, George Eliot, W. Morris, George Mered ith, Thomas Hardy, Savage Landor, Thackeray, Carlyle—in fact every classical au thor and most good modern authors, which I have never even overlooked. A list of the masterpieces I have not read would fill a volume. With only one author can I call myself familiar, Jane Austen. With Keats and Stevenson, I have an acquain tance. So far of English. Of foreign authors I am familiar with Maupassant and the Goncourts. I have yet to finish Don Quixote!
Nevertheless I cannot accuse myself of default. I have been extremely fond o f reading since I was 20, and since I was 20 I have read practically nothing (sa ve professionally, as a literary critic) but what was “right”. My leisure has b een moderate, my desire strong and steady, my taste in selection certainly above the average, and yet in 10 years I seem scarcely to have made an impression upo n the intolerable multitude of volumes which “everyone is supposed to have read ”.
Alfred North Whitehead
Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilization of knowledge.This is an art very, difficult to impart.Whenever a text book is written of real ed ucational worth, you may be quite certain that some reviewer will say that it will be difficult to teach from it. Of course it will be difficult to teach from it. If it were easy, the book ought to be burned; for it cannot be educational. I n education, as elsewhere, the broad primrose path leads to a nasty place. This evil path is represented by a book or a set of lectures which will practically e nable the student to learn by heart all the questions likely to be asked at the next external examination. And I may say. in passing that no educational system is possible unless every question, directly asked of a pupil at any examination is either framed or modified by the actual teacher of that pupil in that subject …
We now return to my previous point, that theoretical ideas should always fin d important applications within the pupil’s curriculum. This is not an easy doc trine to apply, but a very hard one. It contains within itself the problem of ke eping knowledge alive, of preventing it from becoming inert, which is the centra l problem of all education.
…
I appeal to you, as practical teachers. With good discipline, it is always p ossible to pump into the minds of a class a certain quantity of inert knowledge. You take a text book and make them learn it. So far, so good. The child then k nows how to solve a quadratic equation. But what is the point of teaching a chil d to solve a quadratic equation? There is a traditional answer to this question. It runs thus: The mind is an instrument, you first sharpen it, and then use it; the acquisition of the power of solving a quadratic equation is part of the pro cess of sharpening the mind. Now there is just enough truth in this answer to ha ve made it live through the ages. But for all its half truth, it embodies a rad ical error which bids fair to stifle the genius of the modern world. I do not kn ow who was first responsible for this analogy of the mind to a dead instrument. For aught I know, it may have been one of the seven wise men of Greece, or a com mittee of the whole lot of them. Whoever was the originator, there can be no dou bt of the authority which it has acquired by the continuous approval bestowed up on it by eminent persons.But whatever its weight of authority, whatever the high approval which it can quote, I have no hesitation in denouncing it as one of the most fatal, erroneous, and dangerous conceptions ever introduced into the theo ry of education. The mind is never passive; it is a perpetual activity, delicate , receptive, responsive to stimulus.You cannot postpone its life until you have sharpened it. Whatever interest attaches to your subject matter must be evoked hele and now; whatever powers you are strengthening in the pupil, must be exe rcised here and now; whatever possibilities of mental life your teaching should impart, must be exhibited here and now.That is the golden rule of education, and a very difficult rule to follow.
The difficulty is just this: the apprehension of general ideas, intellectual habits of mind, and pleasurable interest in mental achievement can be evoked by no form of words, however accurately adjusted. All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of the mastery of details, minute by minute, hou r by hour, day by day.There is no royal roads to learning through an airy path o f brilliant generalizations.There is a proverb about the difficulty of seeing th e wood because of the trees. That difficulty is exatly the point which I am enfo rcing. The problem of education is to make the pupil see the wood by means of th e trees.
…
Again, there is not one course of study which merely gives general culture, and another which gives special knowledge. The subjects pursued for the sake of a general education are special subjects specially studied; and, on the other ha nd, one of the ways of encouraging general mental activity is to foster a specia l devotion. You may not divide the seamless coat of learning. What education has to impart is an intimate sense for the power of ideas, for the beauty of ideas, and for the structure of ideas together with a particular body of knowledge whi ch has peculiar reference to the life of the being possessing it.
The appreciation of the structure of ideas is that side of a cultured mind w hich can only grow under the influence of a special study. I mean that eye for t he whole chess board, for the bearing of one set of ideas on another.Nothing bu t a special study can give any appreciation for the exact formulation of general ideas, for their relations when formulated, for their service in the comprehens ion of life. A mind so disciplined should be both more abstract and more concret e. It has been trained in the comprehension of abstract thought and in the analy sis of facts.On Education
英语短篇散文如下：
1、It is spring again and the window can be left open as often as one would like. As spring comes in through the windows, so people -- unable to bear staying inside any longer -- go outdoors.The spring outside, however, is much too cheap, for the sun shines on everything, and so does not seem as bright as that which shoots into the darkness of the house.
2、Outside the sun-sloshed breeze blows everywhere, but it is not so lively as that which stirs the gloominess inside the house.Even the chirping of the birds sounds so thin and broken that the quietness of the house is needed to set it off. It seems that spring was always meant to be put behind a windowpane for show, just like a picture in a frame.
3、Wherever you are, and whoever you may be, there is one thing in which you and I are just alike at this moment, all in all the moments of our existence. We are not at rest; we are on a journey. Our life is a movement, a tendency, a steady, ceaseless progress towards an unseen goal. We are gaining something, or losing something, every day.
4、even when our position and our character seem to remain precisely the same, they are changing, for the mere advance of time is a change. It is not the same thing to have a bare field in January and in July. The season makes the difference. The limitations that are childlike in the child are childish in the man.
英语短篇美文欣赏是一种欣赏能力的培养，也是一种提高英语作文能力的途径。以下是我整理的英语短篇美文3篇，供大家学习和品读.
英语美文小短文欣赏篇一
铺满钻石的土地Acres of Diamonds
There was a farmer in Africa who was happy and content. He was happy because he was content. He was content because he was happy.
从前在非洲有一位快乐而满足的农夫。他因满足而快乐，同时也因快乐而感到满足。
One day a wise man came to him and told him about the glory of diamonds and the power that goes along them.
有一天，一位智者向他走来并告知他关于钻石的荣耀，以及随之而来权力。
The wise man says, “If you had a diamond the size of your thumb, you could have your own city. If you had a diamond the size of your fist you could probably own your own country.” And then he went away.
智者说，“如果你拥有一块拇指般大的钻石，你就能换到一座属于自己的城市;如果你拥有一块拳头般大的钻石，你就可能会拥有一个属于自己的国家。”说完他便离开了。
That night the farmer couldn't sleep. He was unhappy and he was discontent. He was unhappy because he was discontent, and he was discontent because he was unhappy.
那一晚，农夫难以入睡，他开始变得不快乐而且不满足起来。他因不满足而不快乐，同样也因为不快乐而变得不满足。
The next morning he made arrangements to sell off his farm, took care of his family and went in search of diamonds. He looked all over Africa and couldn't find any. He looked all through Europe and couldn’t find any. When he got to Spain, he was emotionally, physically and financially broke. He got so disheartened that he threw himself into the Barcelona River and committed suicide.
第二天早上，他卖掉了自己的农场，安顿好了他的家人便踏上了寻找钻石之路。他寻遍了整个非洲但却一无所获。他找遍整个欧洲还是一无所获。当他到达西班牙的时候，他已精神崩溃、周身疲惫、钱财耗尽。绝望之下，他跳进了巴塞罗那河，自杀了。
Back home, the person who had bought his farm was watering the camels at a stream that ran through the farm. Across the stream, the rays of the morning sun hit a stone and made it sparkle like a rainbow.
而在他的家乡，买下他农场的那个人此时正在小溪边给骆驼饮水。潺潺的溪水流经了整个农场。清晨的阳光穿过溪水照射在一块石头上，折射的光芒好像是一道彩虹。
He thought it would look good on the mantelpiece. He picked up the stone and put it in the living room. That afternoon the wise man came and saw the stone sparkling. He asked, "Is Hafiz back?"
这人心想：若是将这块石头摆在壁炉架上一定会十分漂亮。于是，他捡起石头并把它放到客厅里。当天下午，那个智者又出现了。他看到闪闪发光的石头，便问道：“哈夫兹(旧主人)回来了吗?”
The new owner said, "No, why do you ask?" The wise man said, "Because that is a diamond. I recognize one when I see one." The man said, "No, that's just a stone I picked up from the stream. Come, I'll show you. There are many more.' They went and picked some samples and sent them for analysis. Sure enough, the stones were diamonds. They found that the farm was indeed covered with acres and acres of diamonds.
新主人回答说：“没有啊!你为什么会这么问?”智者回答道：“因为这石头是一块钻石，我一眼就能识别。”新主人说：“不是!这只是我从溪水中捡起的一块石头。不信，你就跟我来，那里还有好多呢!” 于是两人走到小溪边，捡了一些石头送去验证。毫无疑问，这些石头确实是钻石!他们还发现这整个农场蕴藏着大量的钻石。
英语美文小短文欣赏篇二
你多大年纪how old are you
if we did not know our age, some of us would appear to be very young, and some of us would seem very old.
如果不知道年龄，我们中的某些人会变得很年轻，而某些人会变得苍老。
sometimes, people use age as a convenient excuse. “i am too old to start something new,” or, “i couldn’t learn that at my age.” other people, though, go on to achieve their greatest accomplishments in life in later years.
有时人们只是用年龄作为一个方便的借口。“我太老了，不能从头来过。”或者说：“我这把年纪学不会了。”还有些人能够在生命的后期完成最伟大的成就。
take, for example, colonel harland sanders who started franchising his chicken outlets when he was 65 years old, duanwenw.com up to the age of 90 years old he traveled 250000 miles a year visiting kfc franchises. he didn’t let age stand in his way!
比如桑德斯上校65岁时开始授权推出他的炸鸡，到90岁时仍然每天长途跋涉二十五万英里检查肯德基特许经营店。他不仅克服了自身经营上的困难，更重要的上他没让年龄成为拦路虎。
feeling lead to attitudes, attitudes become beliefs, and beliefs become the basis for actions.
感觉导致态度，态度变成信仰，信仰变成行动的根本。
it is not important how old you are;
多大年纪并不重要
it is how you feel, how you think, duanwenw.com
重要的是你之所想你之所感
and what you do that is important.
以及你之所为
to quote satchel paige, “how old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?”
撒切尔.佩吉说过：“忘记你多大，你想多大就是多大。”
适合初中生的英语美文篇三
an individual human life should belike a river生命应该像条河
whether sixty or sixteen, there is the desire of wonders, the endless pure desire of what’s next and the joy of the game of living in every human being’s heart.
无论是60岁还是16岁,你都要保持永不衰竭的好奇心、永不熄灭的求知欲和享受在某某心里仍留有一席之地的乐趣。
in the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station: it receives messages of beauty, hope, pleasure, courage and power from men, and all these things keep you young.
在你我的心中有一座无线电台:它能接收到人间万物传递来的美好、希望、欢乐、鼓舞和力量,而所有这些会让你青春焕发。
an individual human life should be like a river —small at first, narrowly contained within its banks and rushing passionately duanwenw.com past rocks and over waterfalls. gradually, the river grows wider and the banks fall back, the water flows more quietly. in the end, without any visible break, they come together in the sea and painlessly lose their individual being.
生命应当像条河,开始是涓涓细流,受两岸的限制而变得狭窄,而后奔腾咆哮,翻过危岩,飞越瀑布;渐渐地河面变得开阔,河岸也随之向两边隐去,最后水流平缓,汇入大海之中,个人就这样毫无痛苦地消失了。
youth means courage over shyness and the adventurous spirit of deserting the love of ease. duanwenw.com this often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. 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 passion wrinkles the soul. worry, fear and self-distrust bow the heart and turn the spirit back into dust.
青春意味着战胜懦弱胆小的勇气和摒弃安逸的冒险精神。往往一个60岁的老者比一个20岁的青年更多一点这种劲头。人老不仅仅是岁月流逝所致,更主要的是不思进取的结果。光阴可以在肌肤上留下印记,而热情之火的熄灭则在心灵上刻下皱纹。烦恼、恐惧、缺乏自信会扭曲人的灵魂,并将青春化为灰烬!
英语美文有助于我们培养对英语学习的兴趣，也能提高我们的写作能力。以下是我整理的3篇英语精美短文，供大家学习和参阅。
一：为什么你存不下钱
Don’t save what is left after spending. But spend what is left after savings.
不要把花剩下的钱拿来存，而是把存剩下的钱拿来花。
Wanting to save money is not enough. Anyway, there are a lot of things which didn’t come true although you wanted them to.
想存钱是远远不够的，毕竟你希望发生的事情并不一定就能发生。
Saving is a technique . It’s simple. It’s just not easy.
存钱是一门技术，这门技术很简单，只是不容易实现。
If you only come to think about saving after you spend, there is no chance for you to accumulate a considerable fortune, because spending is always irrational.
如果你总是在消费之后才想着应该存钱，那你肯定存不下钱，因为任何消费都是非理性的。
The way that works is to make plans in advance.
真正可行的方法，是事先计划好自己的消费方式。
Would it be too much to use 40% of my income to rent an apartment?
每个月用收入的40%租房子会不会太多?
Is it really enough to save just 20% every month?
每个月只存收入的20%会不会太少?
Only by making it clear how much you want to save can you come to know how much you can actually spend.
你只有先计划好要存多少钱，才能知道自己实际上可以花多少钱。
二：真正有意义的生活
What will matter?
什么才重要?
Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no days, no hours or minutes. All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else.
无论是否准备好，总有一天它都会走到尽头。 那里没有日出，没有白天，没有小时和分钟。 你收集的所有东西，不管你珍惜或忘记与否，它们都将流入他人手中。
Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance. It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.
不管是你得到的或是你欠别人的，可你的财产、名誉和权势也都会变成和你毫不相干的东西。
Your grudges, resentments, frustrations, and jealousies will finally disappear.
你的怨恨、愤慨、挫折和妒忌最终也将消失。
So, too, your hopes, ambitions, plans, and to-do lists will all expire.The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.
因此，你的希望、抱负、计划以及行动日程表也将全部结束。 当初看得比较重的成功得失也会消失。
It won't matter where you came from, or on what side of the tracks you lived.
你来自何方，住在穷人区还是富人区也都不重要了。
It won't matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant. Your gender, skin color, ethnicity will be irrelevant.
你昔日的漂亮与辉煌也都不重要了，你的性别、肤色、种族地位也将消失。
So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured?
因此，什么重要呢? 怎么衡量你有生之年的价值呢?
What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built; not what you got, but what you gave.
重要的不是你买了什么，而是你创造了什么; 不是你得到了什么，而是你给予了什么。
What will matter is not your success, but your significance.
重要的不是你成功了，而是你生命的意义。
What will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught.
重要的不是你学到了什么，而是你传授了什么。
What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage and sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.
重要的是每个行动之中都有正直和勇气的气概，伟大的同情心和牺牲精神，并且鼓励他人遵从榜样。
What will matter is not your competence, but your character.
重要的不是你的能力，而是你的性格。
What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you're gone.
重要的不是你认识多少人，而是在你离开后，多少人会怅然若失。
What will matter is not your memories, but the memories of those who loved you.
重要的不是你的回忆，而是爱你的人对你的追思。
What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what.
重要的是别人会记你多长时间，谁记着你，为什么记着你。
Living a life that matters doesn’ t happen by accident.
过有意义的生活不是一桩偶然。
It s not a matter of circumstance but of choice.
是因为你选择了它。
Choose to live a life that matters.
选择有意义的人生吧!
三：难道真要工作一辈子吗?
Warren Buffet once said: "If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die."
沃伦·巴菲特曾经说过：“如果你不想个办法在你睡觉的时候赚钱，那你就得一直工作到死。”
Sounds ridiculous in the first place, right? Isn’t that obvious?
这句话初听下来有点荒.唐，这不是明摆着的吗?
And how on earth can it be possible to make money while you sleep?
而且，怎么可能在睡觉的时候赚钱?
If you want to have an income, you have to work, right?
如果需要有收入，当然就得一直工作，对不对?
But no, what he said is not wrong.
不，其实他说的并没有错。
That way which he described as to make money while you sleep is called investing.
他所说的那种“在睡觉时赚钱”的方法，就是投资。
Normal middle-class use their skills and time to make money. But the rich use their money to make money. They invest the money that they own now to make ROI, which means return on investment.
普通的中产阶级靠技能和时间换钱，而有钱人是靠钱赚钱的，他们用自己现有的钱去赚取投资回报。
It’s not a hard thing to do, because there are a lot of ways to manage your personal finance.
这个方法并不难，因为理财的方式有很多。
In the past, I usually spent as much as I could earn in a month.
从前，我是一个大手大脚的月光族，每个月赚多少就花多少。
But when I saw this quote of Buffett, I suddenly realized: Isn’t that making all my efforts in vain? Because I have nothing left. I didn’t make anything for my future.
但自从看到了巴菲特的这句话，我才恍然大悟：这样一来，我每个月不就白工作了吗?因为什么都没有剩下，我并没有为自己的未来创造什么。
That’s why I started to face the truth of how I was living. And I made some bold changes and began to save money.
这也就是为什么我开始正视自己的生活方式，并进行了大刀阔斧的改变，开始存钱。
I wish that there is a day when I no longer need to work and can use money to make money.
我希望有一天能不再工作，而是用钱来赚钱。
