经典英文美文美句品析
美文文体特征漫论仲文美文，近年颇有声名鹊起之象。但美文一词语义漂移;或说文体，或说文质，难成规范。下面小编整理了经典英文美文美句，希望大家喜欢!
The Beautiful Life
美丽人生
Anonymous
佚名
There were a sensitivity and a beauty to her that have nothing to do with looks. She was the one to be listened to, whose words were so easy to take to heart.
她有着一种与外表无关的灵气和美丽。她的话语轻而易举地征服了人心，那正是我们要聆听的声音。
It is said that the true nature of being is veiled. The labor of words, the expression of art, the seemingly ceaseless buzz that is human thought all have in common the need to get at what really is so. The hope to draw close to and possess the truth of being can be a feverish one. In some cases it can even be fatal, if pleasure is one's truth and its attainment more important than life itself. In other lives, though, the search for what is truthful gives life.
很多人都说人生的真谛是个未知的概念。言词的费力途释、艺术的着力表现还有人类那似乎永无休止的纷繁思考，三者都苦苦追寻人生的真谛。希望走近以至完全把握存在的真意可以令人十分狂热。有时候，有些人以自己笃信的真理为志趣，追寻真理甚于保全生命，于是就有舍生取义之举。然而，也有另外的一种人生，他们在寻求真谛的过程中灌溉生命。
I used to find notes left in the collection basket, beautiful notes about my homilies and about the writer's thoughts on the daily scriptural readings. The person who penned the notes would add reflections to my thoughts and would always include some quotes from poets and mystics he or she had read and remembered and loved. The notes fascinated me. Here was someone immersed in a search for truth and beauty. Words had been treasured, words that were beautiful. And I felt as if the words somehow delighted in being discovered, for they were obviously very generous to the as yet anonymous writer of the notes. And now this person was in turn learning the secret of sharing them. Beauty so shines when given away. The only truth that exists is, in that sense, free.
过去，我常常在教堂的心意篮里面发现一些优美的小短文,有些是关于我的布道，有些是作者日常读(圣经》的感想。写这些短文的人不仅对我的一些观点加以反思，同时还会引用一些他/她曾经读过的，令他/她难忘又喜爱的诗人或者神秘主义者的话。我被这些短文迷住了。我看到了一个执著于追寻真与美的人。其珍而重之的字句，优美动人。我还感觉到好像那些字句也乐于让我们发现，它们是那么毫无保留地，慷慨地为这无名氏作者借用，而现在轮到这位无名氏来学习与人分享这些美文的奥秘。分享令美愈加闪耀生辉，在这个意义上说，其实世上唯一的真理是分毫不费的。
It was a long time before I met the author of the notes.
过了很久我才见到这些短文的作者。
One Sunday morning, I was told that someone was waiting for me in the office. The young person who answered the rectory door said that it was "the woman who said she left all the notes."When I saw her I was shocked，since I immediately recognized her from church but had no idea that it was she who wrote the notes. She was sitting in a chair in the office with her hands folded in her lap. Her head was bowed and when she raised it to look at me, she could barely smile without pain. Her face was disfigured, and the skin so tight from surgical procedures that smiling or laughing was very difficult for her. She had suffered terribly from treatment to remove the growths that had so marred her face.
一个星期天的早上，我被告知有人正在办公室等我。帮我应门的年轻人说“是个女人，说留言是她放的。”当我看见她的时候，我大吃了一惊，因为我马上就认出她是我的教区信徒，只是我一直不知道那些短文是她写的。她坐在办公室的一张椅子上，两手紧握搁在大腿上，低垂着头。当她抬头看我的时候，我注意到她微笑起来十分费劲。那是一张破了相的脸，外科手术使她的脸皮绷得紧紧的，笑对她来说是非常困难的。为了去除脸上碍眼的肉瘤她接受了手术，这令她吃尽了苦头。
We chatted for a while that Sunday morning and agreed to meet for lunch later that week.
那个星期天早上我们聊了一会儿，并决定再找个时间一起吃午饭。
As it turned out we went to lunch several times, and she always wore a hat during the meal. I think that treatments of some sort had caused a lot of her hair to fall out. We shared things about our lives. I told her about my schooling and growing up. She told me that she had worked for years for an insurance company. She never mentioned family, and I did not ask.
后来我们不止吃了一顿，而是好几顿。每次一起吃饭的时候她都戴着帽子。我想可能是她接受的某种治疗使她掉了不少头发。我们分享了各自生活中的点点滴滴。我跟她讲我读书和成长的故事。她告诉我她在一家保险公司里已经工作多年了。她从来没有提过自己的家庭，我也没有问。
We spoke of authors we both had read, and it was easy to tell that books are a great love of hers.
我们还谈到大家都读过的作家作品，不难发现她非常喜欢看书。
I have thought about her often over the years and how she struggled in a society that places an incredible premium on looks,class, wealth and all the other fineries of life. She suffered from a disfigurement that cannot be made to look attractive. I know that her condition hurt her deeply.
这些年我经常想起她，在这个以外表、地位和财富等虚名浮利挂帅的社会中她是怎样一路挺过来的呢?毁掉的容颜使她怎么也无法变得耀眼迷人。我知道这深深地刺痛着她。
Would her life have been different had she been pretty?Chances are it would have. And yet there were a sensitivity and a beauty to her that had nothing to do with looks. She was one to be listened to, whose words were so easy to take to heart. Her words came from a wounded but loving heart, very much like all hearts, but she had more of a need to be aware of it, to live with it and learn from it. She possessed a fine-tuned sense of beauty. Her only fear in life was the loss of a friend.
如果她长得漂亮，她的生命轨迹会不会有所不同呢?有可能。不过她有种独特的灵气和美，与外表没有任何关系。她的话轻而易举地征服了人心，她正是我们要聆听的声音。她的隽语出于一颗受过伤却充满爱的心，就像所有人的心一样，只不过她比别人更注重对自己心灵的关注、用心去体会生活并从中学习。她拥有一种细腻的美感。她生命里唯一的恐惧就是失去朋友。
How long does it take most of us to reach that level of human growth，if we ever get there? We get so consumed and diminished，worrying about all the things that need improving,we can easily forget to cherish those things that last. Friendship,so rare and so good，just needs our care-maybe even the simple gesture of writing a little note now and then，or the dropping of some beautiful words in a basket, in the hope that such beauty will be shared and taken to heart.
我们究竟要花多长时间才能达到如此高度的成熟?能否最终达到还是个未知数呢。我们老觉得身心疲惫，怀才不遇，只顾为眼前的不足忧心忡忡，却忘了珍视一些历久常新的东西。友谊珍贵而美好，只要我们用心呵护，有时候简简单单的表示就已经足够了，苦如偶尔写几句话给朋友，或者在篮子里投入一些优美动人的字条，以期大家都能分享，记住美妙的时刻、美好的感觉。
The truth of her life was a desire to see beyond the surface for a glimpse of what it is that matters. She found beauty and grace and they befriended her, and showed her what is real.
她生命的真谛就是要透过事物的表面一睹其真正的本质。她发现了美和上帝的慈爱，而美和慈爱也待她如友，把生命的真谛呈现给她。
经典的经典英文美文美句The World as I See It
我的世界观
Albert Einstein
【美】阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦
What an extraordinary situation is that of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn;for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he feels it. But from the point of view of daily life，without going deeper, we exist for our fellowmen—in the first place for those on whose smiles and welfare all our happiness depends，and next for all those unknown to us personally with whose destinies we are bound up by the tie of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men，living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. I am strongly drawn to the simple life and am often oppressed by the feeling that I am engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labor of my fellowmen. I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on. force. I also consider that plain living is good for everybody, physically and mentally.
人终究一死，我们所面临的情形是多么不同寻常!每个人来到这个世界上，都是短暂的停留;至于来的原因，却无人知晓。虽然偶尔自以为对此似有感悟，可是没有深入探讨。从日常生活方面来讲，我们是为了同胞而活着—最重要的是这样一些人，他们的微笑和幸福决定了我们所有的幸福;接下来是一些素未谋面的人，他们依靠同情的纽带与我们的命运紧密相连。每天我无数次地告诫自己，他人的劳作，包括那些活着的人和已故的人，支持着我全部的精神生活和物质生活。因此，我一定要全心全意地付出，达到和他们相同的高度，来回报我已经获得并且仍在汲取的恩惠。我十分向往简朴的生活，并且时常心中有愧，因为觉得自己分享了我同胞们太多的劳动成果。我把阶级不同看成与正义格格不入，而且最终被迫采取强制手段。我同样认为，不管是在肉体上还是在精神上，任何人会因为过朴素的生活而受益匪浅。
In human freedom in the philosophical sense I am definitely a disbeliever. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity. Schopenhauer's saying, that "a man can do as he will，but not will as he will,”has been an inspiration to me since my youth up, and a continual consolation and unfailing well-spring of patience in the face of the hardships of life, my own and others'. This feeling mercifully mitigates the sense of responsibility which so easily becomes paralyzing, and it prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it conduces to a view of life in which humor, above all, has its due place.
我根本不相信哲学意义上的那种人类自由。每个人的行为不仅要受到外界强制的局限，而且要合乎内在的必要性。叔本华曾说，“人虽然可以为所欲为，但是不能随心所欲。”从青年时代起，我就总是被这句名言激励着。当自己或别人经历生活中种种磨难时，我总能从这句话中寻得慰藉，从而获得永不干枯的耐心源泉。拥有这种心情，不仅宽厚地减轻了那种使人容易感到心有余而力不足的责任感，也避免了我们太过认真地对待自己和别人;同样有利于人们获得一种人生观，就是首先给予幽默感以应有地位。
To inquire after the meaning or object of one’s own existence or of creation generally has always seemed to me absurd from an objective point of view. And yet everybody has certain ideals which determine the direction of his endeavors and his judgments. In this sense I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves-such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth，Goodness，and Beauty. Without the sense of fellowship with men of like mind, of preoccupation with the objective，the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific research，life would have seemed to me ordinary objects of human endeavor-property, outward success, luxury-have always seemed to me contemptible.
从客观的观点方面，想要探究自身存在乃至一般创造物的意义或目的，我总是觉得不免不合常理。然而，每个人的理想不同，他们的努力和判断方向也不同。从这一意义上看，我永远不会把安逸和享乐当成人生目的本身—我认为这种伦理基础更适合于一群猪猡。真、善、美点亮我的道路，并且不停地赋予我新的勇气，我才能高兴地面对生活的理想。没有志同道合的友情，没有全身心投入于客观世界，追寻在艺术与科学研究领域无法企及的目标，那么我的生活将是空虚的。人们朝思暮想的一般对象—财富、表面的成功、奢侈—对我来说都是可鄙的。
My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced freedom from the need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I gang my own gait and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family,with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties I have never lost an obstinate sense of detachment, of the need for solitude—a feeling which increases with the years. One is sharply conscious,yet without regret, of the limits to the possibility of mutual understanding and sympathy with one's fellow-creatures. Such a person no doubt loses something in the way of geniality and light-heartedness;on the other hand, he is largely independent of the opinions, habits, and judgments of his fellows and avoids the temptation to take his stand on such insecure foundations.
我对社会正义感和社会责任感充满热情，可与此形成鲜明对照的是，我又明显缺乏与别人和社会直接接触的愿望。我一直是按照自己的心愿做事;我未曾全心全意地热爱我的国家、我的家庭、我的朋友，甚至我的至亲;在面对所有这些关系纽带时，我一直保持着一种顽固的超然感以及避世的需要—这种感受随着年龄的增长不断加强。人们真真切切地觉得，人们 的相互理解和共鸣是有界限的，虽然这没什么可惜的。毫无疑问，这样的人会因为亲切和同情心失去一些东西，然而另一方面，他可以在很大程度上避免别人的意见、习惯和判断的影响， 并且能够抵住诱惑，在这些不可靠的基础之上建立其立场。
My political ideal is that of democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and respect from my fellows through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the one or two ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that it is necessary for the success of any complex undertaking that one man should do the thinking and directing and in general bear the responsibility. But the led must not be compelled, they must be able to choose their leader... The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the State but the creative，sentient individual，the personality;it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.
我的政治理想是实现民主制度。尊重每一个作为个体的人，摈弃偶像崇拜。尽管并非是我自己的过错，也并非是我自己的功劳所获，人们却总是过分钦佩和尊敬我本人，这真的是一种命运的戏弄。理解一两个我靠不懈地努力所探知到的理论，或许就是许多人充满渴望却又无法企及的原因。我很明白，任何复杂的事业要想取得成功，就需要有一个人能承担起思考、指挥、全权负责的重任。但是一定不要强迫被领导者，他们一定要能够选定自己的领导者……在我看来，人生精彩的表演中，真正的价值不是国家，而是有创造性的、富有感知能力的个人，是人格;人是唯一能创造出高尚和卓越的生灵，而剩下的芸芸众生在思想和感觉上总是停滞不前。
This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of the herd nature,the military system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake;a backbone was all he needed. This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that does by the name of patriotism—how I hate them! War seems to me a mean，contemptible thing:I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high，in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press.
这个话题让我想起民众本质中最坏的一种表现，即我痛恨不已的军事制度。一个人伴着军乐队的曲调，在队列中前行，而他却能因此高兴。这一行为就足以让我轻视他。他能有一个大脑，就是天大的错误;对他来说一个脊推骨柱已是足够了。在文明社会中，我们应该尽快驱除这种罪恶的祸端。受命而为的英雄主义、泯灭人性的残酷暴行、假借爱国主义之名的一切可恶的胡作非为—诸如此类都令我痛恨不已!在我看来，战争是可鄙、无耻的勾当，我宁愿粉身碎骨，也不愿参与这种令人厌恶的战争。即便如此，对于人类我还会给予很高的评价，我相信，如果商业利益和政治利益没有通过学校和媒体系统，腐蚀各民族的正常理智，那么战争这一妖魔很早之前就不复存在了。
The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of tree art and free science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder,no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery-even if mixed with fear-that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms—it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude;in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension，nor do I wish it otherwise;such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble gh for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvelous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.
我们最美好的经历莫过于对神秘的体验。真正的艺术和真正的科学发源地的基本情感，便是对神秘的体验。对这种情感浑然不知、没好奇心、失去了惊诧感的人，和死人没什么区别，他就像一根被掐灭的蜡烛。正是由于对奥秘的体验—即便夹杂着恐惧—诞生了宗教。我们感到无法理解的事物就在我周围，体会到最深奥的理性和最光彩夺目的美，我们只能用理性去感知这些最原始的形式—真正的宗教虔诚恰恰是这种认识和这种情感结合体，并且只有在这个意义上，我才是一个坚定的宗教支持者。我无法设想会有那样一个上帝:它会稿劳、惩罚自己创造的生物，或者具有我们自己才能体会到的那种意志。一个人在失去生命后他还能继续在另一世界里生活，这不在我的理解能力之内，我也没有心思去理解，那些脆弱灵魂的恐惧或可笑的利己主义者，才会专门研究这些观念。生命永驻的奥秘，现实世界结构中那不可思议的暗示，加上全心全意去探求以便理解自然界展现理性的一部分，无论多么不值一提，对我而言，已经非常满足。
关于经典英文美文美句Francis Bacon On Truth
培根论真理
Francis Bacon
[英]弗朗西斯·培根
Truth，which only doth judge itself，teacheth that the inquiry of truth，which is the love-making or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth，which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God，in the works of the days，was the light of the sense;the last was the light of reason;and his sabbath work ever since is the illumination of his Spirit. First he breathed light upon the face of the matter or chaos;then he breathed light into the face of man;and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of his chosen. The poet that beautified the sect mat was otherwise inferior to the rest saith yet excellently well:It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded，and where the air is always clear and serene)，and to see the errors and wanderings and mists and tempests in the vale below; so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or ainly, it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.
真理只能自我判别，教导人们追寻真理，即对真理的追求;对真理的认知，对真理的信仰，也意味着对真理的享受。这三个要素组成了人性中无比高尚的美德。感性之光是上帝创造世界时创造的第一件东西，最后创造的才是理性之光。上帝精神的再现则是安息日。起初，上帝将光明赋予混乱的物质世界，然后用光明悄然地点亮人类的心灵世界;现在他依然把圣光赐予其所思选的臣民。有一派哲学在其他方面没有什么实际作用，可其中有一位诗人说了一句经典名言:依在海岸边，注视着在大海中飘荡的船帆，是一件快乐的事情;靠在城堡垛口，注视激战中的战场，也是一件快乐的事;但没有什么能赶得上站在真理的前沿(那是一座谁也无法侵占的山岭，那里空气清爽，万籁寂静)，观察山谷中的错误、迷茫、薄雾与风暴，那更是叫人欢欣雀跃。并且这种期望的态度是同情，而非自满或自大。的确，假如一个人的想法中满是仁爱，顺应天意，走在真理的前沿，即便生活在人间，也不逊于天堂。
To pass from theological and philosophical truth to the truth of civil business: it will be acknowledged even by those that practice it not that clear and round dealing is the honor of man's nature; and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver,which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious. And therefore Montaigne said prettily, when he inquired the reason why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace and such an odious charge. Saith he,If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth is as much to say as that he is brave toward God and a coward toward men. For he faces God，and shrinks from man. Surely the wickedness of falsehood and breach of faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed as in that it shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men;it being foretold that when Christ cometh，he shall not find faith upon the earth.
前面讲了神学与哲学意义上的真理，现在来讨论一下日常生活中的真理。品格恶劣，精于世故的人，也被迫接受光明正大—人类的一种崇高品德。虚伪如同用金银合金制成硬币，即便可以增大金属的硬度，却贬低了其内在的真正价值。虚伪与欺诈如同弯曲的小路，唯有走路时依靠肚腹而不是双脚的毒蛇，才选择这条道路。假如一个说谎话、背信弃义的人露出了破绽，由此带来的羞耻感是没有办法掩盖的。因此，蒙田在议论“谎言”一词为何如此让人厌恶时，说过这样一句至理名言:“我们不如这样想，一个人说自己在上帝面前肆意妄为，而在凡人面前却很懦弱，这同说谎没有什么区别。”因为谎言可以面对上帝，却不敢面对凡人。当然，在描述虚伪与背信弃义的危害性时，恳求上帝对世世代代的人类进行裁决，他们无疑是最后的警钟。人们预示:耶稣灵魂来到世上后，他在地球上不会找到丝毫信仰。
