Page 5
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 41. The 50-Percent Theory of Life
I believe in the 50-percent theory.
Half the time things are better than normal; the other half, they are worse.
I believe life is a pendulum swing.
It takes time and experience to understand what normal is, and that gives me the perspective to deal with the surprises of the future.
Let’s benchmark the parameters: Yes, I will die.
I’ve dealt with the deaths of both parents, a best friend, a beloved boss and cherished pets.
Some of these deaths have been violent, before my eyes, or slow and agonizing.
Bad stuff, and it belongs at the bottom of the scale.
Then there are those high points: romance and marriage to the right person; having a child and doing those Dad things like coaching my son’s baseball team, paddling around the creek in the boat while he was swimming with the dogs; discovering his compassion so deep it manifests even in his kindness to snails, his imagination so vivid he builds a spaceship from a scattered pile of Legos.
But there is a vast meadow of life in the middle, where the bad and the good flip-flop acrobatically.
This is what convinces me to believe in the 50-percent theory.
One spring I planted corn too early in a bottomland so flood-prone that neighbors laughed.
I felt chagrined at the wasted effort.
Summer turned brutal the worst heat wave and drought in my lifetime.
The air-conditioner died, the well went dry, the marriage ended, the job lost, the money gone.
I was living lyrics from a country tune music I loathed.
Only a surging Kansas City Royals team, bound for their first World Series, buoyed my spirits.
Looking back on that horrible summer,
I soon understood that all succeeding good things merely offset the bad.
Worse than normal wouldn’t last long.
I am owed and savor the halcyon times.
They reinvigorate me for the next nasty surprise and offer assurance that I can thrive.
The 50-percent theory even helps me see hope beyond my Royals recent slump, a field of struggling rookies sown so that some year soon we can reap an October harvest.
Passage 42. The Road to Happiness
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 into existence.
Women who take an instinctive pleasure in their children can get this kind of satisfaction out of bringing up a family.
Artists and authors and men of science get happiness in this way if their own work seems good to them.
But there are many humbler 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, and when the spring comes, they experience all the joys of having created beauty.
The whole subject of happiness has, in my opinion, been treated too solemnly.
It had been thought that man cannot be happy without a theory of life or a religion.
Perhaps those who have been rendered unhappy by a bad theory may need a better theory to help them to recovery, just as you may need a tonic when you have been ill.
But when things are normal a man should be healthy without a tonic and happy without a theory.
It is the simple things that really matter.
If a man delights in his wife and children, has success in work, and finds pleasure in the alternation of day and night, spring and autumn, he will be happy whatever his philosophy may be.
If, on the other hand, he finds his wife fateful, his children’s noise unendurable, and the office a nightmare; if in the daytime he longs for night, and at night sighs for the light of day, then what he needs is not a new philosophy but a new regimen a different diet, or more exercise, or what not.
Man is an animal, and his happiness depends on his physiology more than he likes to think.
This is a humble conclusion, but I cannot make myself disbelieve it.
Unhappy businessmen, I am convinced, would increase their happiness more by walking six miles every day than by any conceivable change of philosophy.
Passage 43. Two Views of the River
Now when I had mastered the language of this water, and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet,
I had made a valuable acquisition.
But I had lost something, too.
I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived.
All the grace, the beauty, the poetry, had gone out of the majestic river!
I still kept in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steam boating was new to me.
A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place, a long slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the somber shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun.
There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it every passing moment with new marvels of coloring.
Passage 44. How Germans See Others
The Germans generally adore England and have suffered in the past from unrequited love.
England used to be the ultimate role model with its amazingly advanced political, social, industrial and technological achievements.
The Germans regard the English as being very nice and mostly harmless, almost German.
They admire Americans for the (un-German) easygoing pragmatism and dislike them for their (un-German) superficiality.
For the Germans, the United States is the headmaster in the school of nations, and accord due respect if not always affection.
Germans are strong believers in authority.
If you know how to obey, then you can also be a master runs the refrain.
With the Italian Germans have a close understanding because they have so much history in common.
Through wars, invasion and other forms of tourism, a deep and lasting friendship has been established.
Italian art treasures, food and beaches are thoroughly appreciated.
There is also a connection arising from the fact that Italy and Germany both achieved nationhood in the last century, and are still not entirely sure that this was a good thing.
The French are admired for their sophisticated civilization, and pitied for their inferior culture.
The French may have higher spirits, but the Germans have deeper souls.
Despite this, Francophilia is widespread among Germans, especially those living close to the French border.
Like a wistful child looking over the garden fence, Germans envy Mediterranean people for more relaxed attitudes, cultural heritage and warm climate.
But only when they are on holiday.
The only people to whom the Germans readily concede unquestioned superiority of Teutonic virtues are the Swiss.
No German would argue their supremacy in the fields of order, punctuality, diligence, cleanliness and thoroughness.
They have never been to war with the Swiss.
If experience has taught them one thing, it is that there is not future outside the community of nations.
No other nation has a stronger sense of the importance of getting along with others.
Tolerance is not only a virtue, it’s a duty.
Passage 45. Napoleon to Josephine
I have your letter, my adorable love.
It has filled my heart with joy.
Since I left you I have been sad all the time.
My only happiness is near you.
I go over endlessly in my thought of your kisses, your tears, and your delicious jealousy.
The charm of my wonderful Josephine kindles a living, blazing fire in my heart and senses.
When shall I be able to pass every minute near you, with nothing to do but to love you and nothing to think of but the pleasure of telling you of it and giving you proof of it?
I loved you some time ago; since then I feel that I love you a thousand times better.
Ever since I have known you I adore you more every day.
That proves how wrong is that saying of La Bruyere Love comes all of a sudden.
Ah, let me see some of your faults; be less beautiful, less graceful, less tender, less good.
But never be jealous and never shed tears.
Your tears send me out of my mind… they set my very blood on fire.
Believe me that it is utterly impossible for me to have a single thought that is not yours, a single fancy that is not submissive to your will.
Rest well. Restore your health.
Come back to me and then at any rate before we die we ought to be able to say:
We were happy for so very many days!
Millions of kisses even to your dog.
Passage 46 When Heaven and Earth Kiss
For my money, a good sunset is the cheapest shot of wonder out there.
Think of it bursts of incandescent energy that can curl your toes, warm your soul, and prove cost effective all at the same time.
The iciest hearts on the planet can be thawed by the heaven’s burnished flame.
Countries sitting down for peace talks ought to begin with a joint viewing of rose-dipped hues and golden halos merging into growing flowers of light.
And for romance, this daily dose of celestial seduction is just what the love doctor ordered.
When first meeting the incredible woman who is now my wife,
I quickly caught what Bonnie was about when I asked the age-worn question,
So, what do you do?
I chase sunsets, she replied. I was a goner.
I am not sure if that was the exact moment when I fell in love, but it was, at least, the start of my descent.
Cut to our honeymoon and one of my favorite settings in the world
Ireland, the Emerald Isle.
One day we were traveling from the city of Galway toward the Ring of Kerry.
Late in the afternoon we discovered that a boat up ahead could ferry us across a tributary and save some four hours driving time.
I made for the last launch, a mere ten minutes and eighteen kilometers away.
With luck, and no livestock crossings, we would just make it.
All of a sudden Bonnie called out, Stop!
Dutifully, I pulled over.
Bonnie pointed to the sky.
It was the sunset.
Not just any sunset.
This clearly was a masterpiece.
Getting out, we drank deep of a heavenly show of amber and golden hues, rose finger clouds painting the broad canvas of sky.
The bridge would wait another day.
The Ring of Kerry wasn’t going anywhere.
Bonnie and I inhaled the magnificent sunset like ambrosia.
Sunsets, and sunrises for that matter, are gifts served up in plentiful procession.
It’s one of life’s ways of taking a simple pause, marking the day.
If we are too busy, caught in the whirlwind of our own manufacturing, we miss the magic.
What is required in order to drink the heady miracle of morning or evening light is a consciousness of how we use the time allotted to us each day.
Pausing for a moment, we willingly open our spirits to the gifts of the universe.
These are indeed the gifts that help make life this good.
Blazing fire in my heart and senses.
When shall I be able to pass every minute near you, with nothing to do but to love you and nothing to think of but the pleasure of telling you of it and giving you proof of it?
I loved you some time ago; since then I feel that I love you a thousand times better.
Ever since I have known you I adore you more every day.
That proves how wrong is that saying of La Bruyere Love comes all of a sudden.
Ah, let me see some of your faults; be less beautiful, less graceful, less tender, less good.
But never be jealous and never shed tears.
Your tears send me out of my mind… they set my very blood on fire.
Believe me that it is utterly impossible for me to have a single thought that is not yours, a single fancy that is not submissive to your will.
Rest well. Restore your health.
Come back to me and then at any rate before we die we ought to be able to say:
We were happy for so very many days!
Millions of kisses even to your dog.
Passage 47 Disrupting My Comfort Zone
I was 45 years old when I decided to learn how to surf.
They say that life is tough enough.
But I guess I like to make things difficult on myself, because I do that all the time.
Every day and on purpose.
That’s because I believe in disrupting my comfort zone.
When I started out in the entertainment business,
I made a list of people that I thought would be good to me.
Not people who could give me a job or a deal, but people who could shake me up, teach me something, challenge my ideas about myself and the world.
So I started calling up experts in all kinds of fields.
Some of them were world-famous.
Of course, I didn’t know any of these people and none of them knew me.
So when I called these people up to ask them for a meeting, the response wasn’t always friendly.
And even when they agreed to give me some of their time, the results weren’t always what one might describe as pleasant.
Take, for example, Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb.
It took me a year of begging and more begging to get to him to agree to meet with me.
And then what happened? He ridiculed me and insulted me. But that was okay.
I was hoping to learn something from him and I did, even if it was only that I’m not that interesting to a physicist with no taste for our pop culture.
Over the last 30 years, I’ve produced more than 50 movies and 20 television series.
I’m successful and, in my business, pretty well known.
So why do I continue to subject myself to this sort of thing? The answer is simple:
Disrupting my comfort zone, bombarding myself with challenging people and situations this is the best way that I know to keep growing.
And to paraphrase a biologist I once met, if you’re not growing, you’re dying.
So maybe I’m not the best surfer on the north shore, but that’s okay.
The discomfort, the uncertainty, the physical and mental challenge that I get from this all the things that too many of us spend our time and energy trying to avoid they are precisely the things that keep me in the game.
Passage 48 The One Way to Become an Artist
Pupils in all the schools in this country are now exposed to all kinds of temptations which blunt their feelings.
I constantly feel discouraged in addressing them because I know not how to tell them boldly what they ought to do, when I feel how practically difficult it is for them to do it.
If you paint as you ought, and study as you ought, depend upon it the public will take no notice of you for a long while.
If you study wrongly, and try to draw the attention of the public upon you, supposing you to be clever students you will get swift reward; but the reward does not come fast when it is sought wisely; it is always held aloof for a little while; the right roads of early life are very quiet ones, hedged in from nearly all help or praise.
But the wrong roads are noisy, vociferous everywhere with all kinds of demand upon you for art which is not properly art at all; and in the various meetings of modern interests, money is to be made in every way; but art is to be followed only in one way.
Our Schools of Art are confused by the various teaching and various interests that are now abroad among us.
Everybody is talking about art, and writing about it, and more or less interested in it; everybody wants art, and there is not art for everybody, and few who talk know what they are talking about; thus students are led in all variable ways, while there is only one way in which they can make steady progress, for true art is always and will be always one.
Whatever changes may be made in the customs of society, whatever new machines we may invent, whatever new manufactures we may supply,
Fine Art must remain what it was two thousand years ago, in the days of Phidias; two thousand years hence, it will be, in all its principles, and in all its great effects upon the mind of man, just the same.
Observe this that I say, please, carefully, for I mean it to the very utmost.
There is but one right way of doing any given thing required of an artist; there may be a hundred wrong, deficient, or mannered ways, but there is only one complete and right way.
Passage 49 Book and Life
Books are to mankind what memory is to the individual.
They contain the history of our race, the discoveries we have made, the accumulated knowledge and experience of ages; they picture for us the miracles and beauties of nature, help us in our difficulties, comfort us in sorrow and in suffering, change hours of weariness into moments of delight, store our minds with ideas, fill them with good and happy thoughts, and lift us out of and above ourselves.
Many of those who have had, as we say, all that this world can give, have yet told us they owed much of their purest happiness to books.
Macaulay had wealth and fame, rank and power, and yet he tells us in his biography that he owed the happiest hours of his life to books.
He says, if any one would make me the greatest king that ever lived, with palaces and gardens and fine dinners, and wines and coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of servants, on condition that I should not read books,
I would not be a king;
I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who didn’t love reading.
Precious and priceless are the blessings which the books scatter around our daily paths.
We walk, in imagination, with the noblest spirits, through the most solemn and charming regions.
Without stirring from our firesides we may roam to the most remote regions of the earth, or soar into realms when Spenser’s shapes of unearthly beauty flock to meet us, where Milton’s angels peal in our ears the choral hymns of Paradise.
Science, art, literature, philosophy, all that man has thought, all that man has done, the experience that has been bought with the sufferings of a hundred generations, all are garnered up for us in the world of books.
Passage 50 Snow and the Passage of Time
Any snowfall which brings traffic to a standstill and closes schools takes me back to one particular storm in my youth on the shores of Lake Area.
On that day, schools and stores were closed because of the weather.
What resonates for me is a six-block walk I took with my father from our house to the post office.
He bought me stamps for my recently started stamp collection.
I already had a wild assortment of cancelled stamps from around the world.
He brought me brand-new stamps.
I can retrace the route in my mind, walking on snow-covered sidewalks and streets.
It was unusual to be going for a walk with my father on a weekday and so close to home.
In the following years, I never talked about that walk with him,
I never even thought about it until it appeared to me about a decade ago.
A winter memory now returned to the forefront.
The elderly are said to be in the winter of their lives, and winter is synonymous with the end of life.
That does not make the winter the Grim Reaper; rather, it is a time of reflection in those for whom childhood is long gone.
My father died in the summer of 1997.
For me, his final months resembled the patterns of settling in for winter, a turning inward and slowing down.
In the end, his breath grew shallower until there was just the quiet.
There are emotional powers that accompany the season, a blanket of white ties the landscape into a continuous and undulating hall.
The curve of hillsides in the foundations of houses all is connected.
The season keeps us indoors.
Our thoughts and feelings turn inward.
I’m visiting Southern California as I write this, a place where winter expresses itself as rain.
It would be easy to live in a climate where there are no freezing temperatures snow, but I would still define the shape of the year by winter as I knew it from my childhood.