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第23章 如果我休息,我就生锈

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If I Rest, I Rust

奥里森·马登 / Orison Marden

奥里森·马登(1848—1924),美国著名的成功学家。其创办的《成功》杂志在美国无人不晓,它通过创造性地传播成功学改变了无数美国人的命运。他被公认为美国成功学的奠基人和最伟大的励志导师。

Are in the Hole

Understand these new words before you listen to this article.

1. inscription [in'skrip??n] n. 铭文;碑文

2. motto n. 箴言, 格言, 座右铭

3. endeavor n. 尝试

4. spasmodic adj. **的, 一阵阵的

5. vigilance n. 警觉; 警惕; 警戒

The significant inscription found on an old key—“If I rest, I rust”—would be an excellent motto for those who are afflicted with the slightest taint of idleness. Even the industrious might adopt it with advantage to serve as a reminder that, if one allows his faculties 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 attain 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 gates 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 treasury of achievement. If Hugh Miller, after toiling all day in a quarry, had devoted his evenings to rest and recreation he would never have become a famous geologist. The celebrated mathematician, 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 Scotch 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 beads, he would never have become a famous astronomer.