爱华网英语美文欣赏课的教学,应引导学生在阅读中度过一段美好的时光,即感悟生活,触动心灵,让学生在感受语言美的同时,体验真挚的情感美,并形成一定的跨文化意识。本文是经典英语美文，希望对大家有帮助!
经典英语美文：快乐之门
Happiness is like a pebble dropped into a pool to set in motion an ever-widening circle of ripples.As Stevenson has said, being happy is a duty.
There is no exact definition of the word happiness. Happy people are happy for all sorts of reasons.The key is not wealth or physical well-being, since we find beggars, invalids and so called failures who are extremely happy.
Being happy is a sort of unexpected dividend. But staying happy is an accomplishment,a triumph of soul andcharacter. It is not selfish to strive for it. It is, indeed, a duty to ourselves and others.
Being unhappy is like an infectious disease; it causes people to shrink away from the sufferer.He soon finds himself alone, miserable and embittered. There is, however, a cure so simple as to seem,at first glance,ridiculous: If you don’t feel happy, pretend to be!
It works. Before long you will find that instead of repelling people, you attract them.
You discover how deeply rewarding it is to be the center of wider and wider circles of good will.
Then the make-believe becomes a reality. You possess the secret of peace of mind, and can forget yourself in being of service to others.
Being happy, once it is realized as a duty and established as a habit,opens doors into unimaginable gardens thronged with grateful friends.
经典英语美文：成功是一种选择
All of us ought to be able to brace ourselves for the predictable challenges and setbacks thatcrop up everyday. If we expect that life won’t be perfect, we’ll be able to avoid that impulse toquit. But even ifyou are strong enough to persist the obstacle course of life and work,sometimes you will encounter an adverse event that will completely knock you on your back.
Whether it’s a financial loss, the loss of respect of your peers or loved ones, or some othertraumatic event in your life these major setbacks leave you doubting yourself and wondering ifthings can ever changefor the better again.
Adversity happens to all of us, and it happens all the time. Some form of major adversity iseither going to be there or it’s lying in wait just around the corner. To ignore adversity is tosuccumb to the ultimate self-delusion.
But you must recognize that history is full of examples of men and women who achievedgreatness despite facing hurdles so steep that easily could have crashed their spirit and leftthem lying in the dust. Moses was a stutterer, yet he was called on to be the voice of God.Abraham Lincoln overcomes a difficult childhood, depression, the death of two sons, andconstant ridicule during the Civil War to become arguably our greatest president ever. HelenKeller made an impact on the world despite being deaf, dumb, and blind from an early age.Franklin Roosevelt had polio.
There are endless examples. These were people who not only looked adversity in the face butlearned valuable lessons about overcoming difficult circumstances and were able to moveahead.
经典英语美文：住在大都市
Why are so many people so anxious to get away from the small town or village where theybrought up,and to make for the big cities? They usually describe their hometown as "boring"or "dead",or the harshest criticism of all as"provincial".
If we examine the question from a distance, as if we were viewing the whole country from a longway off,westart to get a clue about what it is that lures us into the big cities.
The main point to notice about big cities is that they are big: there are a lot of people,and thereare a lot of things going on. If you look down on a city, literally from a great distance,from anairplane at night, you will be struck by the incredible brightness of a city:there are so manylights that you cannot help feeling that all the bright things of life are down there waiting foryou.But a feeling of disappointment will set in shortly after you land,because you will discoveras you drive into the city center from theairport that the lights are just that:lights, miles andmiles of street lights and neon signs.They are notin themselves sources of joy and happiness:city lights are not friendly, they are merely lights.In fact, the effect will probably be to make youfeel lonely and isolated.
And yet the city lures us, because it is not provincial like the dead little town we have leftbehind us.“Provincial” is in fact our way of describing not the town but the attitude of thepeople. In our littletown,we know (or think we know) everybody. And what we know about themis that they do not want to go anywhere,or to do anything outside to normal routine of theireveryday lives. Unlike us, they have no sense ofadventure,no longing for new experiences ornew horizons.
So we look down on them, pity or despise them, pack our bags, and make for the big worldwhich we know is out there,where the bright lights are. Then a curious thing happens. We finda job, make a small circle offriends and acquaintances,and move into some crampedaccommodation. Gradually we get to know our section of the city, its shops and its people,andfor a while, we begin to feel at home. It is small enough, our part of the city, for us not to feellost or anonymous.We, in effect, create another little village for ourselves within the bigcity.The ultimate irony comes when we rent a television set so that we can stay in atnightandwatch exactly the same programs that our despised country cousins watch.Soon we toobecome “provincial”, and others who live round us will be glad to get up and leave us behind.
