美麗英文：成長是一輩子的事(升級版典藏‧英漢對照)（簡體書）

美麗英文：成長是一輩子的事
——10成長卷
與青春一路同行，重遇更好的自己……
成長是嚴肅的，有時還會很糟糕，但你依然可以充滿希望、一路向前，否則，生命又有什么意義呢？這里有校園記憶、畢業感悟、成長困惑、生命沉思等經典美文，有優美凝練的美麗語錄及大氣磅礴的名校校訓；有的敘述詳盡，有的言簡意賅，有的動人心弦。成長，就是對過去抱有感激，對未來充滿希望，而后繼續堅定地前行！
本書為“美麗英文”系列的成長卷，圍繞“成長”主題，收錄了關于校園記憶、畢業感悟、成長困惑、生命沉思等經典美文，文章有的敘述詳盡，有的言簡意賅，涉及人生睿思、哲理勵志等方方面面；配以經典語錄及雙語校訓，讓讀者學習優美文字的同時，感受到語言的魅力。

徐玲燕，專職口筆譯四年，曾擔任英文審校工作，擅長文學、藝術類作品翻譯，譯作有《那一年，我們一起畢業》等。
牛小蹊，教育機構工作者，擅長英文勵志書籍類翻譯，參與翻譯大量作品、刊發多篇英文美文，譯作有《成長是不可替代的事》等。

最新、最權威的雙語閱讀精品，最美、最動人的心靈成長讀物
365天享受英文?雙語閱讀精品（升級版?典藏）
800個拓展知識+1000篇權威美文+2000句經典語錄+3000個重點詞匯
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○內容經典、主題分明：強大的作家陣容、精辟的名篇佳作，主題劃分清晰明了、章節敘述絲絲入扣。
○類型全面、學習性強：涵蓋校園記憶、畢業感悟、成長困惑、生命沉思等經典美文，在歲月流轉中回憶過去、展望未來，與美麗英文一起慢慢成長。
○形式新穎、享受閱讀：左右開雙語對照、雙色閱讀；每一次閱讀，都是一段動人的記憶；每一句名言，都是一次夢想的綻放。
【全新升級·典藏版】
每一篇美文，都是一次成長的機會；每一句名言，都是一場美麗的遇見。我們很高興能將這些至純至美的英文佳作、至真至善的心靈經典呈現給你，帶你走進一座美麗的英文殿堂……
在本套《美麗英文》（升級版?典藏）叢書中，我們將諸多經典名著、潮流英文、權威讀物、心靈美文凝萃成15大主題，加入【名人課堂】【美麗語錄】【課外閱讀】【經典諺語】等元素，輔以重點詞匯釋義和文化背景知識等更豐富的拓展閱讀，意在以最好的姿態，將這一句句掩卷難忘的妙語佳言、一篇篇震撼心靈的永恒經典呈現給你。365天享受閱讀，從美麗英文開始……這就是我們為你精心送上的禮物。如果你的心在此刻被觸動，請帶著久違的心情，坐下來細細品讀一番，讓靈魂沉浸在此刻的靜謐，讓生命感受這永不消逝的美麗！
【10成長卷】
成長是嚴肅的，有時還會很糟糕，但你依然可以充滿希望、一路向前，否則，生命又有什么意義呢？這里有校園記憶、畢業感悟、成長困惑、生命沉思等經典美文，有優美凝練的美麗語錄及大氣磅礴的名校校訓；有的敘述詳盡，有的言簡意賅，有的動人心弦。成長，就是對過去抱有感激，對未來充滿希望，而后繼續堅定地前行！

愛是謬誤（1）
Love Is a Fallacy (Ⅰ)
◎Max Shulman／馬克斯?舒爾曼
【美麗語錄】
The God only arranges a happy ending. If it is not happy, it means that it is not the final result.
上天只會安排快樂的結局。如果不快樂，說明還沒到最后。
Cool was I and logical. Keen, calculating, perspicacious, acute and astute—I was all of these. My brain was as powerful as a dynamo, precise as a chemist’s scales, as penetrating as a scalpel. And—think of it!—I only eighteen.
It is not often that one so young has such a giant intellect. Take, for example, Petey Bellows, my roommate at the university. Same age, same background, but dumb as an ox. A nice enough fellow, you understand, but nothing upstairs. Emotional type. Unstable. Impressionable. Worst of all, a faddist. Fads, I submit, are the very negation of reason. To be swept up in every new craze that comes along, to surrender oneself to idiocy just because everybody else is doing it—this, to me, is the acme of mindlessness. Not, however, to Petey.
One afternoon I found Petey lying on his bed with an expression of such distress on his face that I immediately diagnosed appendicitis. “Don’t move,” I said. “Don’t take a laxative. I’ll get a doctor.”
“Raccoon,” he mumbled thickly.
“Raccoon?” I said, pausing in my flight.
“I want a raccoon coat,” he wailed.
I perceived that his trouble was not physical, but mental. “Why do you want a raccoon coat?”
“I should have known it,” he cried, pounding his temples. “I should have known they’d come back when the Charleston came back. Like a fool I spent all my money for textbooks, and now I can’t get a raccoon coat.”
“Can you mean,” I said incredulously, “that people are actually wearing raccoon coats again?”
“All the Big Men on Campus are wearing them. Where’ve you been?”
“In the library,” I said, naming a place not frequented by Big Men on Campus.
He leaped from the bed and paced the room. “I’ve got to have a raccoon coat,” he said passionately. “I’ve got to!”
“Petey, why? Look at it rationally. Raccoon coats are unsanitary. They shed. They smell bad. They weigh too much. They’re unsightly. They—”
“You don’t understand,” he interrupted impatiently. “It’s the thing to do. Don’t you want to be in the swim?”
“No,” I said truthfully.
“Well, I do,” he declared. “I’d give anything for a raccoon coat. Anything!”
My brain, that precision instrument, slipped into high gear. “Anything?” I asked, looking at him narrowly.
“Anything,” he affirmed in ringing tones.
I stroked my chin thoughtfully. It so happened that I knew where to get my hands on a raccoon coat. My father had had one in his undergraduate days; it lay now in a trunk in the attic back home. It also happened that Petey had something I wanted. He didn’t have it exactly, but at least he had first rights on it. I refer to his girl, Polly Espy.
I had long coveted Polly Espy. Let me emphasize that my desire for this young woman was not emotional in nature. She was, to be sure, a girl who excited the emotions, but I was not one to let my heart rule my head. I wanted Polly for a shrewdly calculated, entirely cerebral reason.
I was a freshman in law school. In a few years I would be out in practice. I was well aware of the importance of the right kind of wife in furthering a lawyer’s career. The successful lawyers I had observed were, almost without exception, married to beautiful, gracious, intelligent women. With one omission, Polly fitted these specifications perfectly. Beautiful she was. Gracious she was. Intelligent she was not. In fact, she veered in the opposite direction. But I believed that under my guidance she would smarten up. At any rate, it was worth a try. It is, after all, easier to make a beautiful dumb girl smart than to make an ugly smart girl beautiful.
“Petey,” I said, “are you in love with Polly Espy?”
“I think she’s a keen kid,” he replied, “but I don’t know if you’d call it love. Why?”
“Do you,” I asked, “have any kind of formal arrangement with her? I mean are you going steady or anything like that?”
“No. We see each other quite a bit, but we both have other dates. Why?”
“Is there,” I asked, “any other man for whom she has a particular fondness?”
“Not that I know of. Why?”
I nodded with satisfaction. “In other words, if you were out of the picture, the field would be open. Is that right?”
“I guess so. What are you getting at?”
“Nothing, nothing,” I said innocently, and took my suitcase out the closet.
“Where are you going?” asked Petey.
“Home for weekend.” I threw a few things into the bag.
“Look,” I said to Petey when I got back Monday morning. I threw open the suitcase and revealed the huge, hairy, gamy object that my father had worn in his Stutz Bearcat in 1925.
“Holy Toledo!” said Petey reverently. He plunged his hands into the raccoon coat and then his face. “Holy Toledo!” he repeated fifteen or twenty times.
“Would you like it?” I asked.
“Oh yes!” he cried, clutching the greasy pelt to him. Then a canny look came into his eyes. “What do you want for it?”
“Your girl.” I said, mincing no words.
“Polly?” he said in a horrified whisper. “You want Polly?”
“That’s right.”
He flung the coat from him. “Never,” he said stoutly.
I shrugged. “Okay. If you don’t want to be in the swim, I guess it’s your business.”
I sat down in a chair and pretended to read a book, but out of the corner of my eye I kept watching Petey. He was a torn man. First he looked at the coat with the expression of a waif at a bakery window. Then he turned away and set his jaw resolutely. Then he looked back at the coat, with even more longing in his face. Then he turned away, but with not so much resolution this time. Back and forth his head swiveled, desire waxing, resolution waning. Finally he didn’t turn away at all; he just stood and stared with mad lust at the coat.
“It isn’t as though I was in love with Polly,” he said thickly. “Or going steady or anything like that.”
“That’s right,” I murmured.
“What’s Polly to me, or me to Polly?”
“Not a thing,” said I.
“It’s just been a casual kick—just a few laughs, that’s all.”
“Try on the coat,” said I.
He complied. The coat bunched high over his ears and dropped all the way down to his shoe tops. He looked like a mound of dead raccoons. “Fits fine,” he said happily.
I rose from my chair. “Is it a deal?” I asked, extending my hand.
He swallowed. “It’s a deal,” he said and shook my hand.
I had my first date with Polly the following evening. This was in the nature of a survey; I wanted to find out just how much work I had to do to get her mind up to the standard I required. I took her first to dinner. “Gee, that was a delish dinner,” she said as we left the restaurant. Then I took her to a movie. “Gee, that was a marvy movie,” she said as we left the theatre. And then I took her home. “Gee, I had a sensaysh time,” she said as she bade me good night.
I went back to my room with a heavy heart. I had gravely underestimated the size of my task. This girl’s lack of information was terrifying. Nor would it be enough merely to supply her with information. First she had to be taught to think. This loomed as a project of no small dimensions, and at first I was tempted to give her back to Petey. But then I got to thinking about her abundant physical charms and about the way she entered a room and the way she handled a knife and fork, and I decided to make an effort.
冷靜如我，長于邏輯。敏捷、精明、睿智、尖刻、機靈，這些詞匯構成了我的全部。我的大腦像電機一樣發達，像化學家的天平一樣精準，像手術刀一樣犀利。想想看吧！我才18歲而已。
年紀輕輕就智力超群的人可不常有。就拿我的大學室友彼蒂?貝勒斯來說吧，同樣的年齡相同的經歷，卻笨得像頭牛。從外表看上去，小伙子無可挑剔，可惜腦子里卻空空如也。意氣用事，反復無常，缺乏主見。更要命的是，愛趕時髦。時髦這東西，在我看來毫無理智可言。不管流行什么，都一股腦地跟風，大家怎樣自己就怎樣，完全沒腦子——要我說，這簡直愚不可及。但是，彼蒂可不這么想。
一天下午，我看見彼蒂躺在床上，臉上一幅痛苦不堪的表情，我立馬斷定他是得了闌尾炎。“別動彈，”我說，“也別吃什么瀉藥，我這就叫醫生來。”
“浣熊。”他依稀咕噥著。
“浣熊？”我重復了一聲，連忙剎住腳步。
“我要浣熊皮大衣。”他大聲嚎啕。
我明白了，他不是身體不適，而是精神痛苦。“要浣熊皮大衣干嗎？”
“我早該知道，”他哭喊著，不住地捶打太陽穴，“查爾斯頓舞卷土重來時我就該知道它們又會時興起來。可我卻像個傻瓜把錢都花在了課本上，現在我拿什么買浣熊皮大衣啊。”
“你是說，”我表示懷疑地問道，“人們真的又開始穿浣熊皮大衣了？”
“沒看見校園里那些潮人都在穿嘛。你都去哪兒混了？”
“泡圖書館。”我交代了個貌似不受潮人歡迎的地方。
他從床上一躍而起，在房間里踱來踱去。“我一定得弄到一件浣熊皮大衣，”他顯得很激動，“非到手不可！”
“彼蒂，這又何必呢？理智地想想看。浣熊皮大衣不太衛生，還掉毛，還有味道，還很笨重，還不怎么好看，還……”
“你根本不懂，”他不耐煩地打斷了我，“現在的法寶就是它。難道你不想跟上潮流嗎？”
“不想。”我實話實說。
“好吧，我可想著呢，”他肯定地說，“我愿意拿一切來換一件浣熊皮大衣。一切！”
我的大腦如同精密儀器，即刻高速運轉起來。“一切？”我仔細打量著他。
“一切。”回答干脆響亮。
我若有所思地撫了撫下巴。巧了，我知道上哪兒能弄到一件浣熊皮大衣。我父親讀大學時穿過那么一件，現在正躺在我家閣樓的衣箱底呢。更巧的是，彼蒂剛好也有我想要的。盡管他還不算是擁有，但至少他是有優先權的。我說的是他的女朋友波莉?埃斯皮。
我覬覦波莉?埃斯皮已經很久了。我得強調下，我向往這位妙齡女郎可不是出于動了感情。的確，她是那種會讓人心動的姑娘，但我絕不是那種會讓情感占據理智的人。我想得到波莉是經過了深思熟慮、完全理智的衡量。
我現在是法學院一年級學生，過不了幾年就要獨當一面。我深知，一個合適的妻子對律師的前途來說至關重要。據我觀察，凡事業有成的律師大都會找一位美麗優雅而又聰慧的妻子來輔助自己。拋開一點不看，波莉堪稱最佳人選。美麗非她莫屬。優雅她亦兼備。唯獨缺乏智慧。事實上她完全背道而馳。但我相信，假以我的調教，她會開竅的。不管怎么說，這都值得一試，畢竟，改造一個有姿色的笨女人，要比讓一個有腦子的丑女人變漂亮來得容易吧。
“彼蒂，”我開口了，“你在和波莉?埃斯皮談戀愛嗎？”
“我覺得這姑娘很迷人，”他回答，“但我不知道這是不是你所謂的戀愛。干嗎？”
“那么，”我接著問，“你和她之間有認真嗎？我是說，你們有沒有確定關系或類似這種？”
“沒有，我們只是常常見面，但我們各自也都有別的約會。干嗎？”
“有沒有，”我兀自問下去，“某個她特別鐘情的人？”
“據我所知是沒有的。干嗎？”
我滿意地點了點頭。“那也就是說，一旦你讓位，她身邊就沒人了。對吧？”
“我想是吧。你到底要干嗎？”
“沒，沒什么。”我若無其事地應著，從壁櫥里拖出手提箱。
“你去哪兒啊？”彼蒂問我。
“回家度周末。”我草草地往提箱里塞了點東西。
“快看。”周一上午一回來，我就找到彼蒂。我飛快地拉開提箱，把眼前這件碩大的還在散發怪味的毛茸茸的東西展示給他。這件浣熊皮大衣還是我父親在1925年開著斯圖茲勇士跑車時穿的。
“太好了！”彼蒂崇敬地嘆道。他把手插進浣熊皮毛里感受著，隨之把臉也埋了進去，嘴里不斷說著，“太好了！”如此重復了一二十遍。
“想要嗎？”我問他。
“想啊！”他大喊著把那副油滑的皮毛攬入懷中。緊接著，他的眼里露出一絲警惕的神色：“你要從我這換什么呢？”
“你的女朋友。”我直言不諱。
“波莉？”他驚恐地喃喃。“你想要波莉？”
“正是。”
他把大衣撇棄一邊。“沒門。”他顯得很決絕。
我聳聳肩：“好吧。要是你不想跟所謂的潮流的話，我也沒什么好勉強你的。”
我搬過一把椅子，假裝坐下來看書，眼角的余光卻一直瞟著彼蒂。他陷入了極度的不安中。他先是垂涎地望著這件皮大衣，神情像極了流浪兒駐足于面包店櫥窗前的饞樣。接著，他扭過頭去，下巴堅決地一沉。可沒過一會兒，他又回過頭去把目光投向那件皮大衣，臉上露出更加渴望的神情。等他再扭過頭去時，顯然沒有剛才那么堅決了。他的頭就這么扭過來轉過去，越看越愛不釋手，決心越來越不足。最后他干脆死死地盯住皮大衣，一動不動，眼中噙滿貪婪。
“好像我和波莉算不上是在戀愛吧，”他有些含混地說，“也沒有確定關系或類似這種。”
“這才對嘛。”我小聲附和道。
“波莉對我算得了什么？我對波莉又算得了什么？”
“不算什么。”
“只不過是玩玩罷了——在一起尋開心，如此而已。”
“可以試穿了。”我說。
他照做。大衣高高地隆起蓋住了耳朵，下擺則一直曳到腳面，整個人看上去活像一具浣熊尸體堆在那里。他高興地說：“挺合適的。”
我從椅子上站起身來。“可以成交了嗎？”邊說邊向他伸出了手。
他輕易地就答應了。“成交。”說著握了握我的手。
第二天晚上，我就和波莉第一次約會了。約會的目的其實是考察她，我想先摸清到底我有多少工作要做，才能把她的大腦訓練到我的標準。我先帶她去吃飯，離開餐館時，她嗲聲說：“哇噻，好好吃啊。”然后我又帶她去看了場電影，走出影院時她又嗲聲說：“哇噻，好好看哪。”再然后我送她回家，臨別道晚安時她還是嗲聲說：“哇噻，玩得好好呀。”
我心情沉重地回到寢室。我嚴重低估了整個任務的艱巨性。這姑娘知識貧乏得不是一點兩點，以至于光給她灌輸知識也是無濟于事的。首先得教會她思考才行。這可絕非易事，浩大工程赫然擺在面前，我都想把這燙手山芋還給彼蒂算了。可轉念我又想到她舉手投足間的無窮魅力，想到她走進房間時的款款步態，想到她運用刀叉時的嫻熟儀態，我還是決定下番功夫。
……