珀莱雅新品系列:求英语文章一篇

Value Every Minute 珍惜每一寸光阴

To realize the value of one year: Ask a student who has failed a final exam.

To realize the value of one month: Ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby.

To realize the value of one week: Ask an editor of a weekly newspaper.

To realize the value of one hour: Ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.

To realize the value of one minute: Ask the person who has missed the train, bus or plane.
To realize the value of one second: Ask a person who has survived an accident.

To realize the value of one millisecond: Ask the person who has won a silver medal in the Olympics.

Time waits for no one.

Treasure every moment you have. You will treasure it even more when you can share it with someone special. 要知道一年有多宝贵,你就去问下期末考试不及格的学生.

要知道一个月有多宝贵,你就去问下那个刚刚生下早产儿的母亲. 要知道一个星期有多宝贵,你就去问下周报的编辑.
要知道一个小时有多宝贵,你就去问下渴望相逢的恋人.
要想知道一分钟有多宝贵,你就去问下那个刚刚误机,误火车,或是汽车的人.
要知道一秒种有多宝贵,你就问下在事故里大难不死的人.
要知道分秒的宝贵,你就去问在奥运会上拿银牌的选手.
时间不等人.珍惜你所拥有的每一寸光阴,尤其是跟你所爱的人在一起,更加要分外珍惜每一分每一秒.

Passage 1

Sociology is defined as the study of human groups. In the broadest sense, sociology is concerned with understanding patterns of human relationships, their causes and their effects. Unlike psychology, sociology does not attempt to explain the behavior of a particular individual under certain circumstances. Rather, sociology focuses on social trends or other influences that affect whole groups or categories of people. Thus, while a psychologist might counsel an individual who feels worthless after retiring from a long and successful career, a sociologist would be more likely to examine societal attitudes that may contribute to the loss of self-esteem experienced by many retired persons in our society.

The emphasis that sociology places on human groups rather than individuals stems directly from the work of Emile Durkheim, a pioneering sociologist of the nineteenth century. Durkheim likened the nature of a social group to bronze, a unique metal that is formed when the metals tin, copper, and lead are melted and mixed together. Durkheim noted that bronze is much harder than any of its component metals. In the same way, he reasoned, the characteristics of a social group viewed as a whole cannot be determined simply by examining the characteristics of its individual members. Nor can individuals be understood strictly in terms of the individuals themselves; when people come together as members of a particular group, the group exerts considerable pressure on the individual to conform to what it considers acceptable ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

Besides developing a theoretical foundation for the study of social groups, Durkheim also conducted research designed to corroborate his theoretical work. Using landmark research methods, Durkheim collected and analyzed data from a number of countries that kept records on suicides. He wanted to show that social environment may have a profound effect even on those behaviors we consider most personal. The results of his study showed that suicide rates do indeed vary according to specific social characteristics. For example, Durkheim found that members of religions with strong prohibitions against suicide are less likely to commit suicide than are members of religious groups with weaker prohibitions. He also found a lower incidence of suicide among married persons than among persons who were single or divorced. Taken together, the findings of Durkheim's study provided convincing evidence that social groups do indeed exert pressures that control or regulate the behavior of individuals, including deeply personal behaviors.

Durkheim's rigorous research methods captured the attention of sociologists around the world, and were perhaps even more important to the future development of sociology than any specific research results could be. Within a short time, his specific approach to formulating and testing social theory became a model that guided the work of nearly all sociologists. This assured Emile Durkheim a lasting place as one of the key figures in the history of sociology.

Passage 1

My mother started the San Francisco version of the Joy Luck Club in 1949, two years before I was born. This was the year my mother and father left China with one stiff leather trunk filled only with fancy silk dresses. There was no time to pack anything else, my mother had explained to my father after they boarded the boat. Still his hands swam frantically between the slippery silks, looking for his cotton shirts and wool pants.

When they arrived in San Francisco, my father made her hide those shiny clothes. She wore the same brown-checked Chinese dress until the Refugee Welcome Society gave her two hand-me-down dresses, all too large in sizes for American women. The society was composed of a group of white-haired American missionary ladies from the First Chinese Baptist Church. And because of their gifts, my parents could not refuse their invitation to join the church. Nor could they ignore the old ladies' practical advice to improve their English through Bible study class on Wednesday nights and, later, through choir practice on Saturday mornings. This was how my parents met the Hsus, the Jongs, and the St. Clairs. My mother could sense that the women of these families also had unspeakable tragedies they had left behind in China and hopes they couldn't begin to express in their fragile English. Or at least, my mother recognized the numbness in these women's faces. And she saw how quickly their eyes moved when she told them her idea for the Joy Luck Club.

Joy Luck was an idea my mother remembered from the days of her first marriage in Kweilin, before the Japanese came. That's why I think of Joy Luck as her Kweilin story. It was the story she would always tell me when she was bored, when there was nothing to do, when every bowl had been washed and the Formica table had been wiped down twice, when my father sat reading the newspaper and smoking one Pall Mall cigarette after another, a warning not to disturb him. This is when my mother would take out a box of old ski sweaters sent to us by unseen relatives from Vancouver. She would snip the bottom of a sweater and pull out a kinky thread of yarn, anchoring it to a piece of cardboard. And as she began to roll with one sweeping rhythm, she would start her story. Over the years, she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine. . . .

"I thought up Joy Luck on a summer night that was so hot even the moths fainted to the ground, their wings were so heavy with the damp heat. Every place was so crowded there was no room for fresh air. Unbearable smells from the sewers rose up to my second-story window and the stink had nowhere else to go but into my nose. At all hours of the night and day, I heard screaming sounds. I didn't know if it was a peasant slitting the throat of a runaway pig or an officer beating a half-dead peasant for lying in his way on the sidewalk. I didn't go to the window to find out. What use would it have been? And that's when I thought I needed something to do to help me move.

"My idea was to have a gathering of four women, one for each corner of my mah jong table. I knew which women I wanted to ask. They were all young like me, with wishful faces. . . .

"Each week one of us would host a party to raise money and to raise our spirits. The hostess had to serve special dyansyin foods to bring good fortune of all kinds-dumplings shaped like silver money ingots, long rice noodles for long life, boiled peanuts for conceiving sons, and of course, many good-luck oranges for a plentiful, sweet life. . . .

"We decided to hold parties and pretend each week had become the new year. Each week we could forget past wrongs done to us. We weren't allowed to think a bad thought. We feasted, we laughed, we played games, lost and won, we told the best stories. And each week, we could hope to be lucky. That hope was our only joy. And that's how we came to call our little parties Joy Luck."

passage 1

Disagreements among economists are legendary, but not on the issue of free trade. A recent survey of prominent economists--both conservative and liberal--concluded that "an economist who argues for restricting international trade is almost as common today as a physician who favors leeching." (吸血的水蛭)

Why the consensus? International free trade, economists agree, makes possible higher standards of living all over the globe.

The case for free trade rests largely on this principle: as long as trade is voluntary, both partners benefit; otherwise they wouldn't trade. The buyer of a shirt, for example, values the shirt more than the money spent, while the seller values the money more. Both are better off because of the sale. Moreover, it doesn't matter whether the shirt salesman is from the United States or Hong Kong(or anywhere else).

The vast majority of American manufactures face international competition. This competition forces companies to improve quality and cut costs. By contrast, protectionism encourages monopoly, lower quality and higher prices. Americans pay an enormous price for protectionism--over $60 billion a year, or $1000 for a family of four. Thanks to protectionism, for example, American consumers pay twice the world price for sugar.

Free trade also makes the world economy more efficient, by allowing nations to capitalize on their strengths. The United States has an advantage in food production, for instance, while Saudi Arabia has an advantage in oil. The Saudis could undertake massive irrigation to become self-sufficient in food, but it is more economical for them to sell oil and purchase food from us. Similarly, we could become self-sufficient in petroleum by squeezing more out of oil sale. But it is much less costly to buy some of our oil from Saudi Arabia. Trade between our two countries improves the standard of living in both.

Protectionism is both wasteful and unjust. It taxes most heavily the people who can least afford it. Thus, tariffs that raise the price of shoes burden the poor more than the rich. Despite the powerful case for free trade, the United States and the rest of the world have always been protectionist to some degree. This is because free trade benefits the general public, while protectionism benefits special-interest groups, which, are better organized, better financed and more informed. To make matters worse, much of what we hear on this issue is misinformation spread by the special interests themselves.

The 2008 Olympic Games will be hold in Beijing.what can we do for it ? The games is important for all people in China .It is a big chance for our contry to show our new image to the world .So we all should value it .We can do the deed in small things. For example we can collect rubbish to make our contry and environment more beautiful.We can teach the people who don't know much about the games something about it and so on .In all everyone of us should do our best to make a contribution to the Olympic Games .Love our contry.Love the games . 嘿嘿，这是我的最高水平了。