晨读英语美文60篇(含lrc字幕)The Road to Happiness
 音频下载[点击右键另存为]同步字幕下载[点击右键另存为][00:00.00]The Road to Happiness [00:03.25]It is a commonplace among moralists [00:07.72]that you cannot get happiness by pursuing it. [00:10.44]This is only true if you pursue it unwisely. [00:13.95]Gamblers at Monte Carlo are pursuing money, [00:17.44]and most of them lose it instead, [00:19.95]but there are other ways of pursuing money, [00:22.59]which often succeed. [00:24.02]So it is with happiness. [00:26.20]If you pursue it by means of drink, [00:28.51]you are forgetting the hangover. [00:30.34]Epicurus pursued it by living only in congenial society [00:34.83]and eating only dry bread, [00:37.47]supplemented by a little cheese on feast days. [00:41.18]His method proved successful in his case, [00:43.92]but he was a valetudinarian, [00:46.65]and most people would need something more vigorous. [00:49.59]For most people, the pursuit of happiness, [00:52.33]unless supplemented in various ways, [00:54.87]is too abstract and theoretical [00:57.59]to be adequate as a personal rule of life. [00:59.88]But I think that whatever personal rule of life [01:03.61]you may choose it should not, [01:05.78]except in rare and heroic cases, [01:08.42]be incompatible with happiness. [01:10.37]If you look around at the men and women [01:13.34]whom you can call happy, [01:14.99]you will see that they all have certain things in common. [01:18.48]The most important of these things is an activity [01:21.97]which at most gradually builds up something [01:24.51]that you are glad to see coming into existence. [01:27.77]Women who take an instinctive pleasure in their children [01:31.59]can get this kind of satisfaction out of bringing up a family. [01:35.77]Artists and authors and men of science [01:39.15]get happiness in this way [01:40.47]if their own work seems good to them. [01:42.65]But there are many humbler forms of the same kind of pleasure. [01:46.91]Many men who spend their working life in the city [01:50.21]devote their weekends to voluntary [01:52.71]and unremunerated toil in their gardens, [01:55.46]and when the spring comes, [01:57.30]they experience all the joys of having created beauty. [02:00.81]The whole subject of happiness has, [02:03.76]in my opinion, been treated too solemnly. [02:06.59]It had been thought that man cannot be happy [02:10.22]without a theory of life or a religion. [02:12.50]Perhaps those who have been rendered unhappy by a bad theory [02:16.88]may need a better theory to help them to recover, [02:20.28]just as you may need a tonic when you have been ill. [02:24.10]But when things are normal a man should be healthy [02:28.13]without a tonic and happy without a theory. [02:30.44]It is the simple things that really matter. [02:33.19]If a man delights in his wife and children, [02:36.24]has success in work, [02:37.90]and finds pleasure in the alternation of day and night, [02:41.05]spring and autumn, [02:42.37]he will be happy whatever his philosophy may be. [02:45.97]If, on the other hand, he finds his wife fateful, [02:49.80]his children’s noise unendurable, and the office a nightmare; [02:54.28]if in the daytime he longs for night, [02:57.14]and at night sighs for the light of day, [02:59.97]then what he needs is not a new philosophy [03:03.16]but a new regimen—a different diet, or more exercise, or what not. [03:07.96]Man is an animal, [03:09.91]and his happiness depends on his physiology [03:12.88]more than he likes to think. [03:14.54]This is a humble conclusion, [03:16.71]but I cannot make myself disbelieve it. [03:19.65]Unhappy businessmen, I am convinced, [03:22.62]would increase their happiness more [03:24.82]by walking six miles every day [03:27.10]than by any conceivable change of philosophy. |
