The Old Cat

An old woman had a cat. The cat was very old; she could not run quickly, and she could not bite, because she was so old. One day the old cat saw a mouse; she jumped and caught the mouse. But she could not bite it; so the mouse got out of her mouth and ran away, because the cat could not bite it.

Then the old woman became very angry because the cat had not killed the mouse. She began to hit the cat. The cat said, "Do not hit your old servant. I have worked for you for many years, and I would work for you still, but I am too old. Do not be unkind to the old, but remember what good work the old did when they were young."

【译文】

老猫

一位老妇有只猫，这只猫很老，它跑不快了，也咬不了东西，因为它年纪太大了。一天，老猫发现一只老鼠，它跳过去抓这只老鼠，然而，它咬不住这只老鼠。因此，老鼠从它的嘴边溜掉了，因为老猫咬不了它。

于是，老妇很生气，因为老猫没有把老鼠咬死。她开始打这只猫，猫说：“不要打你的老仆人，我已经为你服务了很多年，而且还愿意为你效劳，但是，我实在太老了，对年纪大的不要这么无情，要记住老年人在年青时所做过的有益的事情。”

A man was going to the house of some rich person. As he went along the road, he saw a box of good apples at the side of the road. He said, "I do not want to eat those apples; for the rich man will give me much food; he will give me very nice food to eat." Then he took the apples and threw them away into the dust.

He went on and came to a river. The river had become very big; so he could not go over it. He waited for some time; then he said, "I cannot go to the rich man's house today, for I cannot get over the river."

He began to go home. He had eaten no food that day. He began to want food. He came to the apples, and he was glad to take them out of the dust and eat them.

Do not throw good things away; you may be glad to have them at some other time.

【译文】

一个人正朝着一个富人的房子走去，当他沿着路走时，在路的一边他发现一箱好苹果，他说：“我不打算吃那些苹果，因为富人会给我更多的食物，他会给我很好吃的东西。”然后他拿起苹果，一把扔到土里去。

他继续走，来到河边，河涨水了，因此，他到不了河对岸，他等了一会儿，然后他说：“今天我去不了富人家了，因为我不能渡过河。”

他开始回家，那天他没有吃东西。他就开始去找吃的，他找到苹果，很高兴地把它们从尘土中翻出来吃了。

不要把好东西扔掉，换个时候你会觉得它们大有用处。

The City Mouse and the Country Mouse

Once there were two mice. They were friends. One mouse lived in the country; the other mouse lived in the city. After many years the Country mouse saw the City mouse; he said, "Do come and see me at my house in the country." So the City mouse went. The City mouse said, "This food is not good, and your house is not good. Why do you live in a hole in the field? You should come and live in the city. You would live in a nice house made of stone. You would have nice food to eat. You must come and see me at my house in the city."

The Country mouse went to the house of the City mouse. It was a very good house. Nice food was set ready for them to eat. But just as they began to eat they heard a great noise. The City mouse cried, " Run! Run! The cat is coming!" They ran away quickly and hid.

After some time they came out. When they came out, the Country mouse said, "I do not like living in the city. I like living in my hole in the field. For it is nicer to be poor and happy, than to be rich and afraid."

【译文】

城里老鼠和乡下老鼠

从前，有两只老鼠，它们是好朋友。一只老鼠居住在乡村，另一只住在城里。很多年以后，乡下老鼠碰到城里老鼠，它说：“你一定要来我乡下的家看看。 ”于是，城里老鼠就去了。乡下老鼠领着它到了一块田地上它自己的家里。它把所有最精美食物都找出来给城里老鼠。城里老鼠说：“这东西不好吃，你的家也不好，你为什么住在田野的地洞里呢？你应该搬到城里去住，你能住上用石头造的漂亮房子，还会吃上美味佳肴，你应该到我城里的家看看。”

乡下老鼠就到城里老鼠的家去。房子十分漂亮，好吃的东西也为他们摆好了。可是正当他们要开始吃的时候，听见很大的一阵响声，城里的老鼠叫喊起来：“快跑！快跑！猫来了！”他们飞快地跑开躲藏起来。

过了一会儿，他们出来了。当他们出来时，乡下老鼠说：“我不喜欢住在城里，我喜欢住在田野我的洞里。因为这样虽然贫穷但是快乐自在，比起虽然富有却要过着提心吊胆的生活来说，要好些。

第二篇：最新英语演讲小短文 My Dreams

最新英语演讲小短文 My Dreams

I want to be a teacher when I listen to my teacher carefully. I think I can be a teacher when I grow up. I can help many students learn things well. I can play with my students, too. So we are good friends. I want to be a doctor when I see many doctors save their patients. To be a doctor is really great. I think I can be a doctor when I grow up. Then I can help many people out of danger. I will be the happiest girl in the world. I want to be a reporter when I watch TV every evening. We can get lots of important information from them. They make the world smaller and also make us happy. I would like to be a reporter when I grow up. And I can learn a lot about China and the other countries around the world. I can meet many superstars as well. I have lots of dreams. I think my dreams can come true one day, because there’s an old saying “where there is a will, there is a way.”

Types of Speech

Standard usage includes those words and expressions understood, used, and accepted by a majority of the speakers of a language in any situation regardless of the level of formality. As such, these words and expressions are well defined and listed in standard dictionaries. Colloquialisms, on the other hand, are familiar words and idioms that are understood by almost all speakers of a language and used in informal speech or writing, but not considered appropriate for more formal situations. Almost all idiomatic expressions are colloquial language. Slang, however, refers to words and expressions understood by a large number of speakers but not accepted as good, formal usage by the majority. Colloquial expressions and even slang may be found in standard dictionaries but will be so identified. Both colloquial usage and slang are more common in speech than in writing.

Colloquial speech often passes into standard speech. Some slang also passes into standard speech, but other slang expressions enjoy momentary popularity followed by obscurity. In some cases, the majority never accepts certain slang phrases but nevertheless retains them in their collective memories. Every generation seems to require its own set of words to describe familiar objects and events. It has been pointed out by a number of linguists that three cultural conditions are necessary for the creation of a large body of slang expressions. First, the introduction and acceptance of new objects and situations in the society; second, a diverse population with a large number of subgroups; third, association among the subgroups and the majority population.

Finally, it is worth noting that the terms "standard" "colloquial" and "slang" exist only as abstract labels for scholars who study language. Only a tiny number of the speakers of any language will be aware that they are using colloquial or slang expressions. Most speakers of English will, during appropriate situations, select and use all three types of expressions.

Did you deal with fortune fairly

Most people complain of fortune, few of nature; and the kinder they think the latter has been to them, the more they murmur at what they call the injustice of the former.

Why have not I the riches, the rank, the power, of such and such, is the common expostulation with fortune; but why have not I the merit, the talents, the wit, or the beauty, of such and such others, is a reproach rarely or never made to nature.

The truth is, that nature, seldom profuse, and seldom niggardly, has distributed her gifts more equally than she is generally supposed to have done. Education and situation make the great difference. Culture improves, and occasions elicit, natural talents I make no doubt but that there are potentially, if I may use that pedantic word, many Bacons, Lockes, Newtons, Caesars, Cromwells, and Mariboroughs at the ploughtail behind counters, and, perhaps, even among the nobility; but the soil must be cultivated, and the season favourable, for the fruit to have all its spirit and flavour.

If sometimes our common parent has been a little partial, and not kept the scales quite even; if one preponderates too much, we throw into the lighter a due counterpoise of vanity, which never fails to set all right. Hence it happens, that hardly any one man would, without reverse, and in every particular, change with any other.

Though all are thus satisfied with the dispensations of nature, how few listen to her voice! How to follow her as a guide! In vain she points out to us the plain and direct way to truth, vanity, fancy, affection, and fashion assume her shape and wind us through fairy-ground to folly and error.

很多人抱怨命运，却很少有人抱怨自然；人们越是认为自然对他们仁爱有加，便越是嘀咕命运对他们的所谓不公。

人们常常对命运发出诘难：我为何没有财富、地位、权力以及诸如此类的东西；但人们却很少或从不这样责怪过自然：我为何没有长处、天赋、机智或美丽以及诸如此类的东西。

事实是，自然总是将天赋公平地分配给人们，比人们通常认为的还要不偏不倚，很少过分地慷慨!也很少吝啬。人与人之间的巨大差异是由于教育和环境使然。文化修养改良了天赋，机遇环境诱发了天赋。我们并不怀疑在农田耕作，在柜台后营业，甚至在豪门贵族中间有很多潜在的培根们、洛克们、牛顿们、凯撒们、克伦威尔们和马尔伯勒们，如果允许我用“潜在的”这个学究味浓重的词的话；但是要使果实具有它全部的品质和风味，还必须有耕耘过的泥土，必须有适宜的季节。

倘若大自然有时候有那么一点偏心，没有将天平摆正；倘若有一头过重，我们就会在轻的一头投上一枚大小适当的虚荣的砝码，它每次都会将天平重新调平，从不出差错。因此就出现了这种情况：几乎没有人会毫无保留地和另一个人里里外外全部对换一下。

虽然对于自然的分配，人人都感到满意；然而肯听听她的忠告的人却是如此之少!能将她当作向导而跟随其后的人又是如此之少!她徒然地为我们指出一条通向真理的笔直的坦途；而虚荣、幻想、矫情、时髦却俨然以她的面貌出现，暗中将我们引向虚幻的歧途，走向愚笨和谬误。

Two views of times

Imagine that you spent your whole life at a single house.Each day at the same hour you entered an artificially-lit room,undressed and took up the same position in front of a motion picture camera.It photographed one frame of you per day,every day of your life. On your seventy-second birthday,the reel of film was shown.You saw yourself growing and aging over seventy-two years in less than half an hour(27.4minites at sixteen frames per second). Images of this sort ,though terrifying, are helpful in suggesting unfamiliar but useful perspectives of time. They may ,for example ,symbolize the telescoped ,almost momentary charater of the past as seen through the eyes of an anxious or disa-ffected individual. Or they may suggest the remarkable brevity of our lifes in the cosmic scale of time. If the estimated age of the cosmos were shorted to seventy-two years, a human life would take about ten seconds.

But look at time the other way. Each day is a minor eternity of over 86000 seconds. During each second, the number of distinct molecular functions going on with the human body is comparable to the mumber of seconds in the estimated age of the cosmos, A few seconds are long enough for a revolutionary idea, a startling communication, a baby's conception, a wounding insult, a sudden death. Depending on how we think of them, our lives can be

infinitely long or infinitely short.

Love your life

However mean your life is,meet it and live it ;do not shun it and call it hard names.It is not so bad as you are.It looks poorest when you are richest.The fault-finder will find faults in paradise.Love your life,poor as it is.You may perhaps have some pleasant,thrilling,glorious hourss,even in a poor-house.The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode;the snow melts before its door as early in the spring.I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there,and have as cheering thoughts,as in a palace.The town's poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any.May be they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving.Most think that they are above being supported by the town;but it often happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means.which should be more disreputable.Cultivate poverty like a garden herb,like sage.Do not trouble yourself much to get new things,whether clothes or friends,Turn the old,return to them.Things do not change;we change.Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

不论你的生活如何卑贱，你要面对它生活，不要躲避它，更别用恶言咒骂它。它不像你那样坏。你最富有的时候，倒是看似最穷。爱找缺点的人就是到天堂里也能找到缺点。你要爱你的生活，尽管它贫穷。甚至在一个济贫院里，你也还有愉快、高兴、光荣的时候。夕阳反射在济贫院的窗上，像身在富户人家窗上一样光亮；在那门前，积雪同在早春融化。我只看到，一个从容的人，在哪里也像在皇宫中一样，生活得心满意足而富有愉快的思想。城镇中的穷人，我看，倒往往是过着最独立不羁的生活。也许因为他们很伟大，所以受之无愧。大多数人以为他们是超然的，不靠城镇来支援他们；可是事实上他们是往往利用了不正当的手段来对付生活，他们是毫不超脱的，毋宁是不体面的。视贫穷如园中之花而像圣人一样耕植它吧！不要找新的花样，无论是新的朋友或新的衣服，来麻烦你自己。找旧的，回到那里去。万物不变，是我们在变。你的衣服可以卖掉，但要保留你的思想

Frankness

You must study to be frank with the world:frankness is the child of honesty and courage. Say just what you mean to do, on every occasion. If a friend asks a favor, you should grant it, if it is reasonable; if not, tell him plainly why you cannot. You would wrong him and wrong yourself by equivocation of any kind.

Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or keep one. The man who requires you to do so is dearly purchased at a sacrifice. Deal kindly but firmly with all your classmates. You will find it the policy which wears best. Above all, do not appear to others what you are not.

If you have any fault to find with any one, tell him, not others, of what you complain. There is no more dangerous experiment than that of undertaking to do one thing before a man's face and another behind his back. We should say and do nothing to the injury of any one. It is not only a matter of principle, but also the path of peace and hornor.

By Robert E. Lee

参考译文

在世间必须学会以真诚示人：率真乃是诚实与勇敢之子。无论在何种场合，都应该道出自己的真实想法。如果朋友对你有所求，对于合情合理之请，应该欣然同意；不然，应该明明白白地告诉朋友拒绝的理由。任何模棱两可的话语将会让别人误解，也会使自己蒙受冤屈。

千万不要为了结交朋友或者挽留友情而做错一事。对你有这种要求的人也会付出沉重的代价。与同学真心相对，绝不背叛。你将发现这是最有效用的准则。总之，要以真实面目示人。

如果发现某人身有瑕疵，直接告诉他你的意见，而不是诉之他人。人前一套，背后又是一套，没有什么比这更加危机四伏。任何有损他人的言语或者事情我们都应该避免。这不仅是一种做人的原则，而且也是通向平和的人际关系、获得他人尊敬之道

Just for today 只为今天

Source: 2008-06-06 我要投稿 恒星英语学习论坛 Favorite

就为了今天，我会很快乐；就为了今天，我将磨练自己的意志；就为了今天，我会制定一个计划……

昨天，今天，明天， 也许选择今天最为明智。昨天已经过去，明天还未到来，唯有把握每一个今天，笑对今天，才是人生之一大真谛。

Just for today I will try to live through this day only and not tackle my whole life problem at once. I can do something for twelve hours that would appall me if I had to keep it up for a lifetime.

Just for today I will be happy. This assumes to be true what Abraham Lincoln said, that "Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be."

Just for today I will adjust myself to what is, and not try to adjust everything to my own desires. I will take my "luck" as it comes.

Just for today I will try to strengthen my mind. I will study. I will learn something useful. I will not be a mental loafer. I will read something that requires effort, thought and concentration.

Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways. I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out: If anybody knows of it, it will not count. I will do at least two things I don't want to do-just for exercise. I will not show anyone that my feelings are hurt: they may be hurt, but today I will not show it.

Just for today I will be agreeable. I will look as well as I can, dress becomingly, talk low, act courteously, criticize not one bit, and try not to improve or regulate anybody but myself.

Just for today I will have a program, I may not follow it exactly, but I will have it. I will save myself from two pests: hurry and indecision.

Just for today I will have a quiet half hour all by myself and relax. During this half hour, sometime, I will try to get a better perspective of my life.

Just for today I will be unafraid. Especially I will not be afraid to enjoy what is beautiful, and to believe that as I give to the world, so the world will give to me. From: /englisharticle/Chicken-Soup/2008-06-06/39811.html

生命只有一次

There are moments in life when you miss someone so much that you just want to pick them from your dreams and hug them for real!

Dream what you want to dream; go where you want to go; be what you want to be, because you have only one life and one chance to do all the things you want to do. May you have enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human, enough hope to make you happy.

Always put yourself in others' shoes. If you feel that it hurts you, it probably hurts the other person, too.

The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.

Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried, for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives. Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss and ends with a tear. The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past, you can't go on well in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches.

When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so that when you die, you're the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying.

Please send this message to those people who mean something to you, to those who have touched your life in one way or another, to those who make you smile when you really need it, to those that make you see the brighter side of things when you are really down, to those who you want to let them know that you appreciate their friendship. And if you don't, don't worry, nothing bad will happen to you, you will just miss out on the opportunity to brighten someone's day with this message.

中文：

生活中，有时强烈的思念使我们恨不得一把将所爱的人从梦中带走，实实在在地拥抱他们。

做自己想做的梦吧。去自己想去的地方吧。做自己想做的人吧。生命只有一次，机会只有一回。

愿你有足够的欢乐，使自己甜蜜；有足够的考验，使自己坚强；有足够的悲伤，使自己富有人情；有足够的希望，使自己幸福。

要经常换位思维。一件事，要是你感到对自己有伤害，就可能对他人也有伤害。 最幸福的人并不是那些拥有最好东西的人，他们只是能够将得到的东西变得最好。 幸福属于那些会哭泣的人，那些受过伤害的人，那些探索的人，以及那些尝试过的人。只有他们才懂得对自己生活有影响的人们的重要。爱以微笑开始，在亲吻中成长，以泪水终结。光明灿烂的明天建立在忘却的过去之上。只有让以往的失败和伤心随风而去，你才能过得更好。

出生伊始，哭啼的是你，周围的人却在微笑。珍视生活，好好地活着，这样入死，让周围的人哭啼，自己却在微笑。

请把这些语言送给那些你所关心的人，那些在生活中这样或那样同自己打交道的人，那些需要时能给你带来微笑的人，那些在逆境中依然能使你看到光明的人，那些你珍视与他们之间友谊的人。即使你没有这样做，也不要紧。没有什么大不了的事情，你只是错过了用这些言语照亮他人日子的机会

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