青?春

Youth

塞繆爾·烏爾曼 / Samuel Ullman

塞繆爾·烏爾曼（1840—1920），猶太人，生于德國，1851年隨家人移民到美國密西西比。他雖以教育家和社會活動家而聞名于世，但在文學(xué)創(chuàng)作方面也很有才華。

Pre-reading Activities

Read the  following questions before reading the article.

1. As an old Chinese saying goes: An idle youth a needy age, if you are given a chance to choose between the two: “Life is all cakes and ale”and“Life is full of hard work and study”, which lifestyle will you choose? And stafe your reasons.

2. What’s the current tendency of most young people’s   life style?

3. In your opinion, how can a person always retain his or her youthful vitality? Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spring back to dust.

Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what’s next and the joy of the game of living.

In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station: so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young.

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty. 參考譯文

青春不是年華，而是心態(tài)；青春不是粉面、紅唇、柔膝，而是堅(jiān)強(qiáng)的意志，恢弘的想象，炙熱的戀情；青春是生命深處的自在涌流。

青春氣貫長虹，勇銳蓋過怯弱，進(jìn)取壓倒茍安。如此銳氣，二十后生而有之，六旬男子則更多見。年歲有加，并非垂老，理想丟棄，方墮暮年。

歲月悠悠，衰微只及肌膚；熱忱拋卻，頹廢必致靈魂。憂慮、惶恐、喪失自信，定使靈魂扭曲，意氣如灰。

無論年屆花甲，抑或二八芳齡，心中皆有生命之歡樂，好奇之沖動，孩童般天真久盛不衰。

你我心中都有一臺天線，只要你從天上、人間接受美好、希望、歡樂、勇氣和力量的信號，你就會青春永駐，風(fēng)華常存。

一旦天線墜下，銳氣便被冰雪覆蓋，玩世不恭、自暴自棄油然而生，即使年方二十，實(shí)則垂垂老矣；然而只要豎起天線，捕捉樂觀信號，即使八十高齡，行將告別塵寰，你也會覺得年輕依舊，希望永存。歷史鏈接

太平洋戰(zhàn)爭打得正酣之時(shí)，麥克阿瑟將軍常常從繁忙中抬起頭，注視著掛在墻上的鏡框，鏡框里正是這篇名為《青春》的文章，這篇文章一直伴隨著他來到東京。后來，日本人在東京的美軍總部發(fā)現(xiàn)了它，《青春》便開始在日本流傳。

一位資深的日本問題觀察家說，在日本實(shí)業(yè)界，凡有成就之人，幾乎都受過這篇美文的激勵(lì)，松下電器的創(chuàng)始人松下幸之助就一直把《青春》當(dāng)做他的座右銘。      Chunks in Use

Ｍatch each of the following words with its meaning.

(1) pessimism                    a. a feeling that good things will happen and that

something  will be successful

(2) optimism                      b. a feeling that bad things will happen and that

something  will not be successful

(3) distrust                         c. very great, impossible to measure

(4) appetite                       d. a feeling of not being able to trust somebody or

something

(5) infinite                          e. a strong desire for something Learning for Better Understanding

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy

cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of

the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep

springs of life.

這句話是一個(gè)用短語“a matter of”貫穿的一個(gè)并列句，由此突出了青春高尚的一面?！癆 matter of”here means a situation that involves something or depends on something. 在這里的意思是“關(guān)于……的問題”。

例1：Learning to drive is all a matter of coordination.

學(xué)開車主要是靠協(xié)調(diào)。

例2：Some people prefer pop music to country music, it’s a matter of taste.

有些人喜歡流行音樂而不喜歡鄉(xiāng)村音樂，這只是個(gè)愛好問題。

例3：A: I think he is the most outstanding president so far.

B: Well, that’s a matter of opinion (= other people may think differently).

A: 我認(rèn)為他是迄今為止最杰出的總統(tǒng)。

B: 唔，仁者見仁，智者見智嘛。