英语美文：If I Rest,I Rust

The significant inscription（题词，铭文） found on an old key --“If I rest, I rust¹”-- would be an excellent motto for those who are afflicted² with the slightest bit of idleness. Even the most industrious（勤勉的）person might adopt it with advantage to serve as a reminder³ that, if one allows his faculties⁴ to rest, like the iron in the unused key, they will soon show signs of rust and, ultimately, cannot do the work required of them.

  

Those who would attain⁵ the heights reached and kept by great men must keep their faculties polished by constant use, so that they may unlock the doors of knowledge, the gate that guard the entrances to the professions, to science, art, literature, agriculture---every department of human endeavor.

  

Industry keeps bright the key that opens the treasury⁶ of achievement. If Hugh Miller⁷, after toiling⁸ all day in a quarry⁹, had devoted¹⁰ his evenings to rest and recreation, he would never have become a famous geologist¹¹. The celebrated¹² mathematician¹³, Edmund Stone, would never have published a mathematical dictionary, never have found the key to science of mathematics, if he had given his spare moments to idleness, had the little Scotch¹⁴ lad, Ferguson, allowed the busy brain to go to sleep while he tended sheep on the hillside instead of calculating the position of the stars by a string of beads¹⁵, he would never have become a famous astronomer¹⁶.

 

分享到：