True Nobility(真正的高贵)
By Ernest Hemingway(欧内斯特 海明威)
In a calm sea every man is a pilot.But all sunshine without shade,all pleasure without pain, is not life at all.Take the lot of the happiest-it is a tanled yarn.Bereavements and blessings,one following another, make us sad and blessed by turns.Even death itself makes life more loving.Men come closest to their true selves in the sober moments of life,under the shadows of sorrow and loss.
In the affairs of life or of business,it is not intellect that tells so much as character,not brains so much as heart,not genius so much as self-control,patience,and discipline,regulated by judgment.
I have always believed that the man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without.In an age of extravagance and waste,I wish I could show to the world how few the real wants of humanity are.
To regret one's errors to the point of not repeating them is true repentance.There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man.The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.
We are on a Journey
By Henry Van Dyke(亨利 凡 戴克)
Wherever you are,and whoever you may be,there is on thing in which you and I are just alike at this moment,and 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,everyday.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 reason makes the difference.The limitations that are children in the child are childish in the man.
Everything that we do is a step in one direction or another.Even the failure to do something is itself a deed.It sets us forward or backward.The action of the negative pole of a magnetic needle is just as real as the action of the positive pole.To decline is to accept-the other alternative.
Are you nearer to you port today than you were yesterday?Yes, you must be a little nearer to some port or other;for since your ship was first launched upon the sea of life,you have never been still for a single moment; the sea is too deep,you could not find an anchorage if you would; there can be not pause until you come into port.
Of Studies(论读书)
By Francis Bacon(弗朗西斯 培根)
Studies serve for delight, for ornament,and for ability.their chief use for delight,is in privateness and retiring;for ornament,is in discourse and for ability,is in the judgment and disposition of business. for expert men can exetue,and perhaps judge of particulars,one by one;but the general counsels,and the plots and marshalling of affairs come best from those who are learned.
to spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affection;to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of scholar.they perfect nature, and are perfected by the experience,for natural abilities are like natural plants that need pruning by study;and studies themselves give forth directions too much at large,except they are 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 wisdom without them,and above them,won by observation.
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 be 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.
reading makes a full man;conference a ready man and writing an exact man.and therefore,if a man writes little,he needs to have a gread memory;if he confers little,he needs to have a present wit,and if he reads little,he needs to have much cunning,to seem to know that he does not.histories make men wise;poets,witty;the mathematices, subtle;natural philosophy,deep;moral,grave;logic and rhetoric,able to contend;...so every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.