短篇英语美文,老师推荐的~

1 Life is a Chess-board

The chess-board is the world: the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.

By Thomas Henry Huxley

参考译文

棋盘宛如世界：一个个棋子仿佛世间的种种现象：游戏规则就是我们所称的自然法则。竞争对手藏于暗处，不为我们所见。我们知晓，这位对手向来处事公平，正义凛然，极富耐心。然而，我们也明白，这位对手从不忽视任何错误，或者因为我们的无知而做出一丝让步，所以我们也必须为此付出代价。

2 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

Excerpt from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

参考译文

这是一个最好的时代，也是一个最坏的时代；这是明智的年代，这是愚昧的年代；这是信任的纪元，这是怀疑的纪元；这是光明的季节，这是黑暗的季节；这是希望的春日，这是失望的冬日；我们面前应有尽有，我们面前一无所有；我们都将直下地狱……

3 Equality and Greatness

Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction except the distinction of merit. Money is nothing; character, conduct, and capacity are everything. Instead of all the workers being leveled down to low wage standards and all the rich leveled up to fashionable income standards, everybody under a system of equal incomes would find his or her own natural level. There would be great people and ordinary people and little people, but the great would always be those who had done great things, and never the idiot whose mother had spoiled them and whose father had left a horned thousand a year; and the little