经典美文是语文阅读教学的重要组成部分,可以陶冶情操,丰富想象,还可以培养学生对语言文字的兴趣和敏感力。本文是适合高中的英语美文，希望对大家有帮助!

适合高中的英语美文：电话

When A. G. Bell first invented the telephone, it was a communication tool.Little did he know that he had created an object of emotional significance.

You know those cute toy telephones with colorful push buttons that make happy noises.Those plastic imitations are supposed to let little Junior copy parental behavior,but little Junior wants the real thing. He wants to hold, bang, push,chew on and talk into the real telephone. You cannot simply buy him off with a little baby toy.

Then little Junior grows up. He is busy, successful and important.Or at least he hopes to appear so.What better way to feel like a top man than to close a business deal over his cell phone while grabbing his morning cup of Espresso at Starbucks.

There is also that fashionable lady at the cafe. her little cell phone in its designer jacket has beeped at least three times, signaling her popularity.

Each time, she seemed to enjoy an intimate conversation spiced with little private jokes while you waited in vain for that cellular beep to announce to the world your importance.

Admittedly, not everyone declares social status or personal popularity through the telephone.For many, telephones are practical tools for accessing family, friends and business associates.There are also a few like me who dread the phone.

In my youth, I had believed that the more calls I received, the more important and popular I was.Now older,busier and hopefully wiser, there is nothing I detest more than telephone calls.I had beautiful dreams shattered by the shrill summons of the phone,hard-earned coffee breaks dissolved by friendly but unwanted interruptionsand even urgent bathroom runs painfully delayed. Having been haunted and hounded by the telephone for many years,I can now ignore its insistent jangle.

In fact, I can even with a clear conscience flick the receiver off its hook and slip into blissful dreamland.

当贝尔发明电话的时候，是为了当作交流工具，却未料到他创造的是一个具有相当情感意义的东西。

你知道那些可爱的玩具电话，其颜色鲜艳的按钮可发出快乐的声音。那些塑料的模仿品是要让小孩模仿父母的动作，但是小家伙要的是真东西。他要真正的电话来握、敲、推、咬和讲，你实在无法用一个小小的婴儿玩具来打发他。

而后，小孩长大了。他成为忙碌、成功和重要的人物，至少他希望看上去如此。为了显示自己的出类拔萃，除了一边在手机里完成交易，一边在星巴克赶着喝早晨那杯意式浓缩咖啡之 外，还有更好的方式吗?

此外，坐在咖啡厅里那位走在时代前端的女孩，午餐时，她放在名牌外套里的手机至少已经响了三回，显示她的受欢迎度。每一次，她似乎总带着掺和情趣的笑话小声地亲密交谈，而你却 徒然地等待着手机信号来向世界宣扬你的成就。

但无可否认，并不是每个人都通过电话来显耀身份地位或者名望。对于很多人来讲，电话只是用来联系亲朋好友以及商业伙伴的实用工具。也有一些人跟我一样对电话抱有恐惧感。在我年轻的时候，我是认为接到的电话越多，就表示我越重要和越受欢迎。而现在变得更成熟些、忙碌些和有智慧些，我最为讨厌的就是听到电话铃响了。我的美梦曾经被电话尖锐刺耳的召 唤声破坏殆尽.辛辛苦苦获得的休息时间因为友好但不受欢迎 的打岔而化为泡影;甚至要急着上厕所而强忍着痛楚而被扣留。多年以来被电话所缠绕和穷追不舍，现在我已经可以不理会它 无休的刺耳响声。事实上，我甚至可以坦然的把话筒拿开，溜进幸福美妙的梦乡。

适合高中的英语美文：做一个乐观者

If you change your mind - from pessimism to optimism - you can change your life.Do you seethe glass as half-full rather than half empty?Do you keep your eye upon the doughnut, ot uponthe hole?Suddenly these cliches are scientific questions, as researchers scrutinize the power ofpositive thinking.Research is proving that optimism can help you to be happier, healthier andmore successful.Pessimism leads, by contrast, tohopelessness, sickness and failure, and islinked to depression,loneliness and painful shyness. If we could teach people to think morepositively,it would be like inoculating them against these mental ills.

Your habits count but the belief that you can succeed affects whether or not you will.In part,that’s because optimists and pessimists deal with the same challenges and disappointments invery different ways.When things go wrong the pessimist tends to blame himself.“I’m not goodat this.”“I always fail.”He would say. But the optimist looks for loopholes.Negative or positive, itwas a self-fulfilling prophecy.If people feel hopeless they don’t bother to acquire the skillsthey need to succeed.

A sense of control is the litmus test for success. The optimist feels in control of his own life.Ifthingsare going badly, he acts quickly, looking for solutions, forming a new plan of action,andreaching out foradvice. The pessimist feels like fate’s plaything and moves slowly.He doesn’tseek advice, since he assumes nothing can be done.Many studies suggest that the pessimist’sfeeling of helplessness undermines the body’s natural defenses,the immune system. Researchhas found that the pessimist doesn’t take good care of himself.Feeling passive and unable tododge life’s blows, he expects ill health and other misfortunes,no matter what he does. Hemunches on junk food, avoids exercise, ignores the doctor, has another drink.

Most people are a mix of optimism and pessimism, but are inclined in one direction or theother.It is a pattern of thinking learned at our mothers’ knees.It grows out of thousands ofcautions or encouragements, negative statements or positive ones.Too many “don’t” andwarnings of danger can make a child feel incompetent, fearful and pessimistic. Pessimism is ahard habit to break - but it can be done.

如果你能将悲观情绪转化为乐观情绪，那么你将改变自己的命运。你看到的是杯子中的半杯水，还是空着的另一半?你的眼睛盯着的是炸面包圈，还是它当中的圆洞?当研究者们详细检 测积极思维的作用时，突然之间这些陈词滥调都成为了科学问题。研究证实，乐观能够让你更加快乐、更加健康、更加成功。相反，悲观则会导致无望、疾病以及挫败;其与消沉、孤独和使人 痛苦的腼腆不无关系。假如我们能够教导人们更加积极地去思考，那就会像给他们注射预防这些心理疾病的疫苗。

你的诸多习惯固然重要，但是你能够成功的信念影响着你是否真的会成功。在某种程度上讲，这是由于乐观主义者和悲 观主义者以迥异的方式对待相同的挑战与失望。当出了问题之后，悲观主义者往往自我责备。他会说我不揸长做这种事”，“我总是失败”。但是乐观主义者则寻找疏漏之处。不管是消极还是积极的想法，都是一种本身会得以实现的预言。如果人们感觉毫无希望,那么他们就不会花费力气去获得成功所需要的技能。

有无攀控感是成功的试金石。乐观主义者感觉到能够攀握自己的命运。如果亊出不利，他立即作出反应，寻求解决办法，制定新的行动计划，而且主动去请教他人。悲观主义者则感觉到自己只能任凭命运摆布，行动起来拖拖拉拉。既然认为无计可施，他便不去寻求他人的意见。许多研究显示，悲观主义者的无助感会损害人体的自然防御体系，即免疫系统。研究发现悲观主义者不会很好地照顾自己。这种人消极被动，不会避幵生活中的打击,不管做什么都会担心身体不好或者其他灾祸降临。他吞吃着垃圾食品(不利子健康且营养价值低的食品),逃避体 育锻炼，忽视医生的劝告，总是要再贪一杯。

在大多数人身上，乐观主义和悲观主义兼而有之，但总是更加倾向于其中之一。这是在母亲膝下之时就已经形成的思维模式。它源自千万次瞀告或者鼓励，积极的或者消极的话语。过多的"不许"和危险警告会让一个孩子感到无能、胆怯——以至于悲观。悲观是一种很难克服的习惯一但是其并非不能够克服。

适合高中的英语美文：思维的飞跃

You’ve had a problem, you’ve thought about it till you were tired,forgotten it and perhaps slepton it, and then flash!When you weren’t thinking about it suddenly the answer has come to you,as a gift from thegods.

Of course all ideas don’t come like that, but the interesting thing is that so many do,particularlythe most important ones.They burst into the mind, glowing with the heat of creation. Howthey do it is a mystery.Psychology does not yet understand even the ordinary processes ofconscious thought,but the emergence ofnew ideas by a “leap in thought” is particularlyintriguing,because they must have come from somewhere.For the moment let us assume thatthey come from the “unconscious”.This is reasonable, for the psychologists use this term todescribe mental processes which are unknown to the subject,and creative thought consistsprecisely in what was unknown becoming known.

It seems that all truly creative activity depends in some degree on these signals from theunconscious,andthe more highly intuitive the person, the sharper and more dramatic thesignals become.

But growth requires a seed,and the heart of the creative process lies in the production of theoriginal fertile nucleus from which growth can proceed.This initial step in all creationconsists in the establishment of a new unity from disparate elements, oforder out ofdisorder, of shape from what was formless. The mind achieves this by the plastic reshaping,so as to form a new unit, of a selection of the separate elements derived from experience andstored in memory. Intuitions arise from richly unified experience.

This process of the establishment of new form must occur in pattern of nervous activity in thebrain, lying below the threshold of consciousness, which interact and combine to form morecomprehensive patterns. Experimental physiology has not yet identified this process, for itsmethods are as yet insufficiently refined,but it may be significant that a quarter of the totalbodily consumption of energy during sleep goes tothe brain, even when the sense organs are atrest, to maintain the activity of ten million brain cells. These cells, acting together as a singleorgan, achieve the miracle of the production of new patterns of thought.No calculatingmachine can do that, for such machines can “only do what we know how to design them to do”,and these formative brain processes obey laws which are still unknown.

Can any practical conclusions be drawn from the experience of genius? Is there an art ofthought for the ordinary person? Certainly there is no single road to success; in the world ofthe imagination each has to find his own way to use his own gift.

你遇到了一个难题,为其绞尽脑汁，直至精疲力竭，将它置之脑后,或许带養疑虑进入梦乡。然而，忽然之间灵光一闪，当你没在思考这一问题时，答案如同天赐神助一般，突然出现在你的脑子里。

当然，并非所有的妙想都是这样得来，可有趣的是，许多想 法，特别是那些至关重要的想法都是这样产生的。它们倏忽之 间闯入脑海，散发着独创的光热。它们的形成过程是一个谜。 心理学迄今甚至连普通的有意识思维过程都没有研究清楚，但 是依靠"思想的火花”产生创见的现象还是让人特别感兴趣，因 为这种创见必定有个出处。我们暂且假定它们来自于“潜意 识"。这也是有道理的，因为心理学家们利用这个术语来描述对 于未知研究对象的心理过程，而创造性思维正是在于认清未曾 认识到的东西。

在某种程度上,所有真正的创造性活动似乎都取决于这些 来自潜意识的信号，并且，一个人的直觉愈加强烈，这些信号就愈加鲜明，愈加富有戏剧性。

可是萌芽生长需要种子，而创造过程的核心也在于形成最 初的丰实的胚胎，使成长得以进行。所有创造的第一步，均在于 把没有联系的因素重新结合，将无序变成有序，将无形变成有 形。要做到这一点，大脑就要选择从经验中得到的或者存储于 记忆之中的互无关联的因素，并加以整理重塑，以形成新的统一 体。直觉来源于丰富的系统化的经验。

这种新形式的形成过程只能出现在大脑神经活动模式之中，处子意识范围的开端，相互作用又相互融合，而形成更加复 杂的模式。实验生理学还无法识别这一过程，原因是其实验方法仍不够完善。可或许值得注意的是，人在睡眠的时候，尽管感 觉器官处于休息状态，但是所有体能消耗的四分之一却用于大 脑，以维持其上百亿个脑细胞的活动。这些共同运作的脑细胞 创造了产生思维新模式的奇迹。计算机不能做到这一点，因为它们“只能按照我们的设计力所能及的方式运行”，而那些具有建构能力的大脑活动过程遵循的却是我们所未知的规律。

从天才们的经验中，我们能得到任何实际的结论吗?有没有适用于普通人的思维艺术?成功之路不止一条。在一个提倡 想像力的世界中，每个人都要找到发挥自己天分的道路。