有那些好的英文美文值得背下来，默写出来？

有那些好的英文美文值得背下来，默写出来？

课件偷偷发的……老师要求每周背一篇她找的美文。上上学期跟读奥巴马演讲，听力口语时事都能捎上～这几篇四六级水平吧

奥巴马演讲音频和文档

背诵文章

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The Gettysburg address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new

nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created

equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any

nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of the field, as a final resting

place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether

fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can

not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have

consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note,

nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is

for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who

fought here have thus far so nobly advance. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to

the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased

devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we

here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation,

under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people,by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

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Youth

------Samuel Ullman

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 tempera mental predominance of courage over timidity, of the

appetite for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of 60 more

than a boy of 20. 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 60 or 16, 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 if 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 even at 20, but as long as your aerials

are up, to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at 80.

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Of Study

------Francis Bacon（节选）

Studies serve for delight for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight

is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the

judgement and disposition of business for expert men can execute, and perhaps judge

of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of

affairs, come best, from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is

sloth, to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgement wholly

by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by

experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants that need pruning, by study; and

studies themselves, do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded

in by experience.

Reading makes a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer

little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much

cunning, to seem to know, that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the

mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.

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A Beautiful Campus

------Ralph W. Ellison

It was beautiful college. The buildings were old and covered with vines and the

roads gracefully winding, lined with ledges and wild roses that dazzled the eyes in the

summer sun. Honeysuckles and purple wisteria hung heavy from the trees and white

magnolias mixed with their scents in the bee-humming air. I’ve recalled it often. How

the grass turned green I the springtime and how the mocking birds fluttered their tails

and sang, how the moon shone on the buildings, how the bell on the chapel tower rang

out the precious short-lived hours; how the girls in bright summer dresses

promenaded the grassy lawn.

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Beautiful and Plentiful August

------Charles Dickens

There is no month in the whole year, in which nature wears a more beautiful

appearance than in the month of August! Spring has many beauties, and May is a

fresh and blooming month, but the charms of this time of year are enhanced by their

contrast with the winter season. August has no such advantage. It comes when we

remember nothing but clear skies, green fields and sweet-smelling flowers -------

when the recollection of snow, and ice, and bleak winds, has faded from our minds as

completely as they have disappeared from the earth ------- and yet what a pleasant

time it is! Orchards and corn-fields ring with the hum of labor; trees bend beneath the

thick clusters of rich fruit which bow their branches to the ground; and the corn piled

in graceful sheaves, or waving in every light breath that sweeps above it, as if it

wooed the sickle, tinges the landscape with a golden hue. A mellow softness appears

to hand over the whole earth; the influence of the season seems to extend itself to the

very waggon, whose slow motion across the well-raped field, is perceptible only to

the eye, but strikes with no harsh sound upon the ear.

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On Etiquette

------William Hazlitt

Etiquette to society is what apparel is to the individual. Without apparel men

would go in shameful nudity which would surely lead to the corruption of morals; and

without etiquette society would be in a pitiable state and the necessary intercourse

between its members would be interfered with by needless offences and troubles. If

society were a train, the etiquette would be the rails along which only the train could

rumble forth; if society were a state coach, the etiquette would be the wheels and axis

on which only the coach could roll forward. The lack of proprieties would make the

most intimate friends turn to be the most decided enemies and the friendly or allied

countries declare war against each other. We can find many examples in the history of

mankind. Therefore I advise you to stand on ceremony before anyone else and o take

pains not to do anything against etiquette lest you give offences or make enemies.

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The Road to Happiness

By Bertrand Russell

If you look around at the men and women whom you can call happy, you will see

that they all have certain things in common. The most important of these things is an

activity which at most gradually builds up something that you are glad to see coming i

nto existence. Women who take an instinctive pleasure in their children can get this ki

nd of satisfaction out of bringing up a family. Artists and authors and men of science g

et happiness in this way if their own work seems good to them. But there are many hu

mbler forms of the same kind of pleasure. Many men who spend their working life in

the city devote their weekends to voluntary and unremunerated toil in their gardens, a

nd when the spring comes, they experience all the joys of having created beauty.