晨读英语美文100篇 Passage 59. Work
 音频下载[点击右键另存为][00:00.88]Passage 59. Work[00:04.71]It is physically impossible for a well-educated,intellectual, [00:14.66]or brave man to make money the chief object of his thoughts; [00:18.60]as physically impossible as it is for him to make his dinner the principal object of them. [00:24.84]All healthy people like their dinner, [00:27.68]but their dinner is not the main object of their lives. [00:31.07]So all healthyminded people like making money [00:34.46]—ought to like it and to enjoy the sensation of winning it; [00:38.73]but the main object of their lives is not money; it is something better than money. [00:44.42]A good soldier, for instance, mainly wishes to do his fighting well. [00:49.23]He is glad of his pay—very properly so, [00:52.51]and justly grumbles when you keep him ten months without it; [00:56.46]still his main notion of life is to win battles, not to be paid for winning them. [01:02.15]So of doctors. [01:04.22]They like fees no doubt—ought to like them; [01:07.62]yet if they are brave and well educated,the entire object of their lives is not fees. [01:14.07]They, on the whole,desire to cure the sick, [01:17.57]and—if they are good doctors, and the choice were fairly put to them [01:22.38]—would rather cure their patient and lose their fee than kill him and get it. [01:27.42]And so with all other brave and rightly trained men; [01:31.36]their work is first, their fee second, very important always,but still second. [01:37.82]But in every nation, there is a vast class of people who are cowardly, [01:43.94]and more or less stupid. And with these people, [01:47.99]just as certainly the fee is first and the work second, [01:52.04]as with brave people the work is first and the fee second. [01:56.63]And this is no small distinction. It is the whole distinction. [02:01.89]It is the whole distinction in a man. [02:05.06]You cannot serve two masters; you must serve one or the other. [02:10.75]If your work is first with you, and your fee second, work is your master. [02:16.98]Observe, then, all wise work is mainly threefold in character. [02:22.67]It is honest,useful, and cheerful. [02:25.40]I hardly know anything more strange than that you recognize honesty in play, [02:31.32]and do not in work. [02:33.94]In your lightest games you have always someone to see what you call “fair play”. [02:39.19]In boxing you must hit fair; in racing, start fair. [02:43.79]Your watchword is fair play; your hatred, foul play. [02:47.29]Did it ever strike you that you wanted another watchword also, [02:51.55]fair work, and another hatred also, foul work? |
