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This is a collection of 100 beautiful essays in English.Each essay is good for reading. I hope you will find the essays interesting and knowledge giving.
Make a schedule to read one or two essays/articles daily to keep improving your English language.
There are total 10 web pages , each containing 10 essays.You can progress on page numbers and essays by clicking from the links provided.
| Page 1 | Essays 1-10 |
| Page 2 | Essays 10-20 |
| Page 3 | Essays 21-30 |
| Page 4 | Essays 31-40 |
| Page 5 | Essays 41-50 |
| Page 6 | Essays 51-60 |
| Page 7 | Essays 61-70 |
| Page 8 | Essays 71-80 |
| Page 9 | Essays 81-90 |
| Page 10 | Essays 91-100 |
Passage 81 My Declaration of Self-Esteem
I am me.
In the entire world, there is no one else exactly like me.
There are people who have some parts like me but no one adds up exactly like me.
Therefore, everything that comes out of me is authentically mine because I alone choose it.
I own everything about me my body, including everything it does; my mind, including all my thoughts and ideas; my eyes, including the images of all they behold; my feelings, whatever they might be anger, joy, frustration, love, disappointment, excitement; my mouth and all the words that come out of it polite, sweet and rough, correct or incorrect; my voice, loud and soft; all my actions, whether they be to others or myself.
I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears.
I own all my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes.
Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me.
By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with me in all my parts.
I can then make it possible for all of me to work in my best interests.
I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know.
But as long as I am friendly and loving to myself,
I can courageously and hopefully look for the solution of the puzzles and ways to find out more about me.
However I look and sound, whatever I say and do and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is me.
This is authentic and represents where I am at that moment in time.
When I review later how I looked and sounded, what I said and did, and how I thought and felt, some parts may turn out to be unfitting.
I can discard that which is unfitting and keep that which proved fitting, and invent something new for that which I discarded.
I can see, hear, feel, think, say and do.
I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me.
I own me and therefore I can engineer me.
I am me and I am okay.
Passage 82. Youth
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 will, a quality of 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 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 spirit 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 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 as you are 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 20, but as long as your aerials are up to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at 80.
Passage 83. Why I Want a Wife
I belong to that classification of people known as wives.
I am A Wife. And, not altogether incidentally, I am a mother.
Not too long ago a male friend of mine appeared on the scene fresh from a recent divorce.
He had one child, who is, of course, with his ex-wife. He is looking for another wife.
As I thought about him while I was ironing one evening, it suddenly occurred to me that I, too, would like to have a wife.
Why do I want a wife?
I would like to go back to school so that I can become economically independent, support myself, and if need be, support those dependent upon me.
I want a wife who will work and send me to school.
And while I am going to school I want a wife to take care of my children.
I want a wife who take care of my physical needs.
I want a wife who will keep my house clean.
I want a wife who cooks the meals, a wife who is a good cook.
I want a wife who will plan the menus, do the necessary grocery shopping, prepare the meals, serve them pleasantly, and then do the cleaning up while I do my studying.
I want a wife who will care for me when I am sick and sympathize with my pain and loss of time from school.
I want a wife who will not bother me with rambling complaints about a wife’s duties.
But I want a wife who will listen to me when I feel the need to explain a rather difficult point I have come across in my course of studies.
And I want a wife who will type my papers for me when I have written them.
When I am through with school and have a job,
I want my wife to quit working and remain at home, so that my wife can more fully and completely take care of a wife’s duties.
If, by chance, I find another person more suitable as a wife than the wife I already have,
I want the liberty to replace my present wife with another one.
Naturally, I will expect a fresh, new life; my wife will take the children and be solely responsible for them so that I am left free.
My god, who wouldn’t want a wife?
Passage 84. The Modern Plato
The modern Plato, like his ancient counterpart has an unbounded contempt for politicians and statesmen and party leaders who are not university men.
He finds politics a dirty game, and only enters them reluctantly because he knows that at the very least he and his friends are better than the present gang.
Brought up in the traditions of the ruling classes, he has a natural pity for the common people whom he has learnt to know as servants, and observed from a distance at their work in the factory, at their play in the parks and holiday resorts.
He has never mixed with them or spoken to them on equal terms, but has demanded and generally received a respect to his position and superior intelligence.
He knows that if they trust him, he can give them the happiness which they crave.
A man of culture, he genuinely despises the self-made industrialist and newspaper-king: with a modest professional salary and a little private income of his own, he regards money-making as vulgar and avoids all ostentation.
Industry and finance seem to him to be activities unworthy of gentlemen, although, alas some part in them.
An intellectual, he gently laughs at the superstitions of most Christians, but he attends church regularly because he sees the importance of organized religion for the maintenance of sound morality among the lower orders, and because he dislikes the skepticism and materialism of radical teachers.
His genuine passions are for literature and the philosophy of science and he would gladly spend all his time in studying them.
But the plight of the world compels his unwilling attention, and when he sees that human stupidity and greed are about to plunge Europe into chaos and destroy the most glorious civilization which the worlds has destroyed, he feels that it is high time for men of good sense and good will to intervene and to take politics out of the hands of the plutocrats of the Right and the woolly-minded idealists of the Left.
Since he and his kind are the only representatives of decency combined with intelligence, they must step down into the arena and save the masses for themselves.
Passage 85. A Grain of Sand
Here is a story.
A participant in the long-distance race got his shoes filled with sand when he was crossing a beach.
He had to stop to get the sand out hastily before he resumed running.
Unfortunately a grain of sand remained rubbing the sole and became increasingly telling so that each step meant a twinge of pain.
Reluctant to halt and get rid of the sand he continued to run in spite of the pain until he could stand no more.
He dropped out of the contest just a few yards from the finishing line.
As he managed to get out of the shoe painfully he was surprised to find the cause of his lasting torment was only a grain of sand.
It seems that the greatest obstacle on one’s way forward may not be a high mountain or a deep valley but a grain of sand that is hardly visible.
To avoid blame on a minor fault one may tell a lie.
That adds a burden to a heavy heart and weighs it down.
In the days to come he will have to fabricate one falsehood after another to cover the lie he told and the fault he committed.
Thus he will never be able to free himself from lingering anxiety, worry and regret, to the ignorance that all his sufferings originate in only a grain of sand the first lie he told.
Passage 86 Three Days to See
Most of us take life for granted.
We know that one day we must die, but usually we picture that day as far in the future.
The days stretch out in an endless vista, so we go about our petty tasks, hardly aware of our listless attitude toward life.
The same lethargy characterizes the use of all our faculties and senses.
Only the deaf appreciate hearing, only the blind realize the manifold blessings that lie in sight.
I have often thought it would be a blessing if each human being were stricken blind and deaf for a few days at some time during his early adult life.
Darkness would make him more appreciative of sight; silence would teach him the joys of sound.
When walking the woods, I, who cannot see, find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch.
I feel the delicate symmetry of a leaf.
I pass my hands lovingly about the smooth skin of a silver birch, or the rough, shaggy bark of a pine.
In the spring I touch the branches of trees hopefully in search of a bud the first sign of awakening Nature after her winter’s sleep.
I feel the delightful, velvety texture of a flower, and discover its remarkable convolutions; and something of the miracle of Nature is revealed to me.
Occasionally, if I am very fortunate, I place my hand gently on a small tree and feel the happy quiver of a bird in full song.
I am delighted to have the cool waters of a brook rush thought my open finger.
To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.
To me the pageant of seasons is a thrilling and unending drama, the action of which streams through my finger tips.
If I can get so much pleasure from mere touch, how much more beauty must be revealed by sight.
Suppose you set your mind to work on the problem of how you would use your own eyes if you had only three more days to see.
If with the oncoming darkness of the third night you knew that the sun would never rise for you again, how would you spend those three precious intervening days? What would you most want to let your gaze rest upon?
I, naturally, should want most to see the things which have become dear to me through my years of darkness.
You, too, would want to let your eyes rest on the things that have become dear to you so that you could take the memory of them with you into the night that loomed before you.
Passage 87. Motherly and Fatherly Love
Motherly love by its very nature is unconditional.
Mother loves the newborn infant because it is her child, not because the child has fulfilled any specific condition, or lived up to any specific expectation.
Unconditional love corresponds in one of the deepest longings, not only of the child, but of every human being; on the other hand, to be loved because of one’s merit, because one deserves it, always leaves doubt; maybe I did not please the person whom I want to love me, maybe this or that there is always a fear that love could disappear.
Furthermore, deserved love easily leaves a bitter feeling that one is not loved for oneself, that one is loved only because one pleases, that one is, in the last analysis, not loved at all but used.
No wonder that we all cling to the longing for motherly love, as children and also as adults.
The relationship to father is quite different.
Mother is the home we come from, she is nature, soil, the ocean; father does not represent any such natural home.
He has little connection with the child in the first years of its life, and his importance for the child in this early period cannot be compared with that of mother.
But while father does not represent the natural world, he represents the other pole of human existence; the world of thought, of man-made things, of law and order, of discipline, of travel and adventure.
Father is the one who teaches the child, who shows him the road into the world.
Fatherly love is conditional love.
Its principle is I love you because you fulfill my expectations, because you do your duty, because you are like me.
In conditional fatherly love we find, as with unconditional motherly love, a negative and a positive aspect.
The negative aspect is the very fact that fatherly love has to be deserved, that it can be lost if one does not do to what is expected.
In the nature of fatherly love lies the fact that obedience becomes the main virtue, that disobedience is the main sin and its punishment the withdrawal of fatherly love.
The positive side is equally important.
Since his love is conditional, I can do something to acquire it, I can work for it; his love is not outside of my control as motherly love is.
Passage 88. Ambition
It may seem an exaggeration to say that ambition is the drive of society, holding many of its different elements together, but it is not an exaggeration by much.
Remove ambition and the essential elements of society seem to fly apart.
Ambition is intimately connected with family, for men and women not only work partly for their families; husbands and wives are often ambitious for each other, but harbor some of their most ardent ambitions for their children.
Yet to have a family nowadays with birth control readily available, and inflation a good economic argument against having children is nearly an expression of ambition in itself.
Finally, though ambition was once the domain chiefly of monarchs and aristocrats, it has, in more recent times, increasingly become the domain of the middle classes.
Ambition and futurity a sense of building for tomorrow are inextricable.
Working, saving, planning these, the daily aspects of ambition have always been the distinguishing marks of a rising middle class.
The attack against ambition is not incidentally an attack on the middle class and what it stands for.
Like it or not, the middle class has done much of society’s work in America; and it, the middle class, has from the beginning run on ambition.
It is not difficult to imagine a world short of ambition.
It would probably be a kinder world: without demands, without abrasions, without disappointments.
People would have time for reflection.
Such work as they did would not be for themselves but for the collectivity.
Competition would never enter in.
Conflict would be eliminated, tension become a thing of the past.
The stress of creation would be at an end.
Art would no longer be troubling, but purely entertaining in its functions.
The family would become superfluous as a social unit, with all its former power for bringing about neurosis drained away.
Life span would be expanded, for fewer people would die of heart attack or stroke caused by overwork.
Anxiety would be extinct.
Time would stretch on and on, with ambition long departed from the human heart.
Ah, how unbearably boring life would be!
Passage 89. Stress Prevention
Stress is a normal part of life and usually comes from everyday occurrences.
Here are some ways you can deal with everyday sources of stress.
Eliminate as many sources of stress as you can.
For example, if crowds bother you, go to supermarket when you know the lines won’t be too long.
Try renting videotapes rather than going to crowded movie theaters.
If you are always running late, sit down with a pencil and paper and see how you are actually allotting your time.
You may be able to solve your problem (and distress your life a bit) just by being realistic.
If you can’t find the time for all the activities that are important to you, maybe you are trying to do too much.
Again, make a list of what you do during the day and how much each activity takes.
Then cut back.
Avoid predictably stressful situations.
If a certain sport or game makes you tense (whether it’s tennis or bridge), decline the invitation to play.
After all, the point of these activities is to have a good time.
If you know you won’t, there’s no reason to play.
If you can’t remove the stress, remove yourself.
Slip away once in a while for some private time.
These quiet moments may give you a fresh perspective on your problems.
Competing with others, whether in accomplishments, appearance, or possessions, is an avoidable source of stress.
You might know people who do all they can to provoke envy in others.
While it may seem easy to say you should be satisfied with what you have, it’s the truth.
Stress from this kind of jealousy is self-inflicted.
Labor-saving devices, such as cell phones or internet, often encourage us to cram too many activities into each day.
Before you buy new equipment, be sure that it will really improve your life.
Be aware that taking care of equipment and getting it repaired can be stressful.
Try doing only one thing at a time.
For example, when you are riding your exercise bike, you don’t have to listen to the radio or watch television.
Remember, sometimes it’s okay to do nothing.
If you feel stress (or anything else) is getting the better of you, seek professional help a doctor or psychologist.
Early signs of excess stress are loss of a sense of well-being and reluctance to get up in the morning to face another day.
Passage 90. Old Friends, Good Friends
More than 30 years ago, when I took my first job in New York City,
I found myself working with a number of young women.
Some I got to know just in passing, but others gradually became my friends.
Today, six of these women remain an important part of my life.
They are more than simply friends, more even than close friends.
They are old friends, as indispensable as sunshine and more dear to me than ever.
These people share a long-standing history with me.
In fact, old friends are a lot like promises.
They put reliability into the uncertainty of life and establish a reassuring link between the past, present, and future.
The attachment between friends who have known each other for many years is bound to be complex.
On occasion we are exceedingly close, and at other times one or both of us invariably step back.
Ebb and flow. Thick and thin.
How smoothly and gently we negotiate these hills and valleys has everything to do with how well the friendship ages.
Sometimes events intervene in a way that requires us to rework the term of a relationship.
A friend starts a second career, let’s say, and suddenly has less free time.
Another remarries, adding someone new to the equation.
Talk honestly and listen to each other to find out if the others needs are being met.
Renegotiating pays full tribute to life’s inevitable changes and says that we deem our friendships worthy of preserving.
Old friends are familiar with the layers of our lives.
They have been there in the gloom and the glory.
Even so, there’s always room to know more about another person.
Of course, self-disclosure can make even old friends more vulnerable, so go slowly:
Confiding can open new doors, but only if we knock first.
Time is the prime commodity between old friends by this I mean the time spent doing things together.
Whether it’s face to face over a cup of coffee, side by side while jogging, ear to ear over the phone, or via email and letters, don’t let too much time go by without sharing your thoughts with each other.