Unit 1 Your College Years

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3.

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6.

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8.

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Unit 2 How Reading Changed My Life

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3. 4.

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Unit 4 Diogenes and Alexander

1.

2. with a few handfuls of water scooped from the spring.

3. Long ago he had owned a rough wooden cup, but he threw it

away when he saw a boy drinking out of his hollowed hands.

4. Everybody knew him, or knew of him.

5. Sometimes they threw bits of food, and got scant thanks;

sometimes a mischievous pebble, and got a shower of stones and abuse.

6. He knew they were mad, all mad, each in a different way;

7. It was not a house, not even a squatter's hut.

8. He thought everybody lived far too elaborately, expensively,

anxiously.

9. No one needs beds and chairs and such furniture: the animals

live healthy lives and sleep on the ground.

10. All we require, since nature did not dress us properly, is one

garment to keep us warm, and some shelter from rain and wind.

11. He was the founder of the creed called Cynicism

(doggishness);

12. he spent much of his life in the rich, lazy, corrupt Greek city of

Corinth, mocking and satirizing its people, and occasionally converting one of them.

13. It was a storage jar made of earthenware, no doubt discarded

because a break had made it useless.

14. He was not the first to inhabit such a thing. But he was the first

who ever did so by choice, out of principle.

15. Live without conventions, which are artificial and false; escape

complexities and extravagances: only so can you live a free life.

16. with its many rooms and its elaborate furniture,

17. They possess him. He is their slave.

18. In order to procure a quantity of false, perishable goods he has

sold the only true, lasting good, his own independence.

19. He was a missionary.

20. His life's aim was clear to him: it was "to restamp the currency":

to take the clean metal of human life, to erase the old false conventional markings, and to imprint it with its true values.

21. The other great philosophers of the fourth century BC, taught

mainly their own private pupils.

22. And, by design, he publicly behaved in such ways as to show

people what real life was.

23. Diogenes answered, "I am trying to find a man."

24. "When you are all so busy," he said, "I felt I ought to do

something!"

25. And so he lived—like a dog, some said, because he cared

nothing for conventions of society,

26. Now he was lying in the sunlight, contented and happy, happier

(he himself used to boast) than the Shah of Persia.

27. He looked them over, as a sober man looks at a crowd of

tottering drunks and shook his head.

28. Only twenty, Alexander was far older and wiser than his years.

29. Like all Macedonians he loved drinking, but he could usually

handle it; and toward women he was nobly restrained and chivalrous.

30. the young prince slept with the Iliad under his pillow and longed

to emulate Achilles, who brought the mighty power of Asia to ruin.

31. He taught him philosophy, in particular the shapes and uses of

political power:

32. Alexander took with him a large corps of scientists, and shipped

hundreds of zoological specimens back to Greece for study.

33. seek out everything strange which might be instructive.

34. He was the man of the hour, of the century;

35. to seek employment with him, even simply to see him:

36. did not visit the new monarch.

37. With that generosity which Aristotle had taught him, Alexander

determined to call upon Diogenes.

39. With his handsome face, his fiery glance, his strong body, his

purple and gold cloak, and his air of destiny, he moved through the parting crowd toward the Dog's kennel.

40. When a king approaches, all rise in respect. Diogenes merely

sat up on one elbow. When a monarch enters a place, all greet him with a bow or an acclamation. Diogenes did nothing.

41. Alexander spoke first, with a kindly greeting.

42. "Yes," said the Dog. "Stand to one side. You're blocking the

sunlight."

43. There was an amazed silence. Slowly, Alexander turned away.

A titter broke out from the elegant Greeks. The Macedonian officers, after deciding that Diogenes was not worth the trouble of kicking, were starting to guffaw and nudge one another.

44. They took it as a paradox.

45. He understood Cynicism as the others could not.

46. He was what Diogenes called himself, a "citizen of the world."

Like Diogenes, he admired the heroic figure of Hercules, who labored to help mankind while all others toiled and sweated only for themselves.

47. He knew that of all men then alive in the world only Alexander

the conqueror and Diogenes the beggar were truly free.

 

第二篇：现代大学英语精读5课后句子解释

Lesson1

1. The job of arousing manhood within a people that have been taught for so many centuries

that they are nobody is not easy.

It is no easy job to educate a people who have been told over centuries that they were inferior and of no importance to see that they are humans, the same as any other people.

2. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the

long night of physical slavery.

If you break the mental shackles imposed on you by white supremacists, if you really respect yourself, thinking that you are a Man, equal to anyone else, you will be able to take part in the struggle against racial discrimination.

3. The Negro will only be free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and

signs with the pen and ink of assertive manhood his own emancipation proclamation.

The liberation of mind can only be achieved by the Negro himself/herself. Only when he/she is fully convinced that he/she is a Man/Woman and is not inferior to anyone else, can he/she throw off the manacles of self-abnegation and become free.

4. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power

correcting everything that stands against love.

Power in the best form of function is the carrying out of the demands of justice with love and justice in the best form of function is the overcoming of everything standing in the way of love with power.

5. At that time economic status was considered the measure of the individual’s ability and

talents.

At that time, the way to evaluate how capable and resourceful a person was to see how much money he had made (or how wealthy he was).

6. …the absence of worldly goods indicated a want of industrious habits and moral fiber.

A person was poor because he was lazy and not hard-working and lacked a sense of right and wrong.

7. It is not the work of slaves driven to their tasks either by the task, by the taskmaster, or by

animal necessity.

This kind of work cannot be done by slaves who work because the work has to be done, because they are forced to work by slave-drivers or because they need to work in order to be fed and clothed.

8. …when the unjust measurement of human worth on the scale of dollars is eliminated.

…when the unfair practice of judhing human calue by the amount of money a person has irs done away with.

9. He who hates does not know God, but he who has love has the key that unlocks the door to

the meaning of ultimate reality.

Those who harbor hate in their hearts cannot grasp the teachings of God. Only those who have love can enjoy the ultimate happiness in Heaven.

10. Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an

anemia of deeds.

Let us be dissatisfied until America no longer only talk about racial equality but is unwilling or reluctant to take action to end such evil practice as racial discrimination.

Lesson 3

1. Yet globalization… “is a reality, not a choice”.

2. Popular factions sprout to exploit nationalist anxieties.

3. …where xenophobia and economic ambition have often struggled for the upper hand…

4. Those people out there should continue to live in a museum while we will have showers that

work.

5. Westernization… is a phenomenon shot with inconsistencies and populated by very strange

bedfellows.

6. You don’t have to be cool to do it; you just have to have the eye.

7. He… was up in the cybersphere far above the level of time zones.

8. In the first two weeks of business the Gucci Store took in a surprising ＄100,000.

9. Early on I realized that I was going to need some type of compass to guide me through the

wilds of global culture.

10. The penitence may have been Jewish, but the aspiration was universal.

Lesson 4

1. Pianos and models, Paris, Vienna and Berlin, masters and mistresses, are not needed by a

writer.

If you want to be musician or painter, you must own a piano or hire models, and you have to visit or even live in culture centers like Paris, Vienna and Berlin. And also you have to be taught by masters and mistresses. However, if you want to be a writer, you don’t need all this.

2. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing.

Those conventional attitudes would have taken away the most important part of my writing, the essence of my writing.

3. Thus, whenever I felt the shadow of her wing or the radiance of her halo upon my page, I

took up the inkpot and flung it at her.

Thus, whenever I felt the influence of the Victorian attitudes on my writing, I fought back with all my power.

4. For though men sensibly allow themselves great freedom in theses respects, I doubt that

they realize or can control the extreme severity with which they condemn such freedom in women.

It was a sensible thing for men to given themselves great freedom to talk about the body and their passions. But if women want to have the same freedom, men condemn such freedom in women. And I do not believe that they realize how severely they condemn such freedom in women, nor do I believe that they can control their extremely sever condemnation of such freedom in women.

5. Indeed it will be a long time still, I think, before a woman can sit down to write a book

without finding a phantom to be slain, a rock to be dasher against.

It will take a long time for women to rid themselves of false values and attitudes and to overcome the obstacle to telling the truth about their body and passions.

6. Even when the path is nominally open—when there is nothing to prevent a woman from

being a doctor, a lawyer, a civil servant—there are many phantoms and obstacles, as I believe looming in her way.

Even when the path is open to women in name only, when outwardly there is nothing to prevent a woman from being a doctor, a lawyer, a civil servant, inwardly there are still false ideas and obstacles impeding a woman’s progress.

7. You have won rooms of your own in the house hitherto exclusively owned by men.

(Through fighting against the Angel in the House, through great labor and effort,) you have gained a position or certain freedom in a society that has been up to now dominate by men.

Lesson 8

1. …and I was conscious of his superiority in a way which was embarrassing and led to trouble.

I knew that Oppenheimer was a man of great talent his way of showing his talent at seminars caused uneasiness and resentment among people, especially among his fellow students.

2. …this did not seem to be the sort of anecdote that would go over especially well at a

conference devoted to poetry.

Since those attending the conference were people devoted to poetry, such an anecdote, though interesting, might not be appreciated by the audience.

3. Pitted against these excellent reasons for my not going to the conference were two others

that finally carried the day.

These were two reasons for my going to the conference ser against the reasons for my not going and they became decisive in my final decision.

4. He is, for me, one of those people whose writing about their writing is more interesting than

their writing itself.

According to my view, Spender belongs to the group whose writings about their lives, experiences that is whose autobiographies, are more interesting than their literary works.

5. Auden’s Dirac-like lucidity, the sheer wonder of the language, and the sense of fun about

serious things… were to me irresistible.

Like Dirac, Auden was outstanding in clarity. He was also outstanding in the powerful use of the language and the sense of fun about serious issues. All these greatly fascinated me.

6. Spender’s journal entry on his visit is fascinating both for what it says and for what it does

not say.

Spender’s record of this visit is interesting not only because of the things he mentions but also because of the things he does not say.

7. … Oppenheimer appears in Spender’s journal as a disembodied figure with no contextual

relevance to Spender’s own life.

In his book, Spender fails to give a connected, complete picture of Oppenheimer and does nit mention that Oppenheimer’s background and situation has quite a lot to do with Spender.

8. The real thing was much better.

The real person looked much better than the pictures.

9. One probably should not read too much into appearance…

Maybe one should not attach too much importance to appearance.

10. He had outlived them all, but was still under their shadow, especially that of Auden…

He had lived longer than any of his more famous friends but traces or influences of these friends, especially those of Auden, could still be found on him.

Lesson 10

1． We still remember that assassinated world as idyllic, secure…., we will speak of it in the

reverent tones reserved for the dead.

In our memory , the pre-September 11 world was peaceful ,happy and safe (overlooking the fact that this was not the case) and we will talk about those days with a feeling of deep respect and love which can only be found in talking about dead people.

2． ...the spoils of war include some of our most cherished values and liberties.

In order to win the way, we might have to give up some of the basic values and liberties we treasure most. This might be the cost we have to pay.

3． Who are attempting to colonize the future with their own repressive agenda?

They are planning to carry out the plan of expanding the power of law enforcement agencies at home and of striking at the “axis of evil ” abroad so as to extend American domination into areas originally beyond American reach ,such as Central Asia .Hence ,the colonization of the future .

4． Which assumes the public is thinking in red, white and blue, when actually the spectrum of

emotions, ideas and opinions is, like America itself, multihued.

Which takes for granted that people think in a simple and uniform way while actually the feelings, thoughts and views of the American people are as varied as America itself?

5． We too are mired near the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid, struggling to regain our lost sense of

safety and security.

The terrorist attacks put us at the bottom of the hierarchy of human needs, trying hard to reestablish our confidence in physical safety, the lowest type of safety.

6． It is something we associate with repressive regimes, not with participatory democracies.

We are used to thinking that Western democracies practice rule of law and individual rights and freedom are protected by law. Violation of individual rights and suppression of dissenting voices can only be found in repressive regimes.

7． There was a relaxing of the rampant materialism, along with its ugly stepsisters isolation and

compulsion, that has been the undoing of community in this country.

People began to put less emphasis on the pursuit of wealth and possession of worldly goods. And the other two dangerous symptoms that went with materialism, that is physical separation from others and irrational behavior as a result of impulse also became less serious .Materialism, together with the accompanying symptoms of separation and compulsion, had been the cause of the ruin of community in this country.

8． …Discourages national introspection at a time when it would be most valuable.

At a time when it is highly important for Americans to look into ourselves and ask ourselves why “they hate us”, this concept directs our attention and thinking away from such analysis.

9． …History is a gallery of unspeakable crimes.

History records many crimes committed by human beings which are so horrible that they defy description.

10. We tend these images like poisonous flowers in a nightmare garden.

In spite of the fact that these images are horrible images, images of large-scale atrocity, we still take care to keep alive these images.