新思維英語寫作基礎教程（簡體書）

When I was a teenager and failed to get a job Id counted on.I telephoned the interviewer to ask why."Because you came ten minutes late," I was told."We cant afford employees who waste other peoples time." The explanation was reassuring （I hadnt been rejected as a person） and helpful, too.I dont think Ive been late for anything since.
Success, which encourages repetition of old behavior, is not nearly as good a teacher as failure.You can learn from a disastrous party how to give a good one, from an ill-chosen first house to what to look for in a second.Even a failure that seems total can prompt fresh thinking, a change of direction.
A friend of mine, after 12 years of studying ballet, did not succeed in becoming a dancer.She was turned down by the ballet master, who said, "You will never be a dancer. You havent the body for it." In such cases, the way to use failure is to take stock courageously, asking, "What have I left？ What else can I do？" My friend put away her toe shoes and moved into dance therapy, a field where shes both competent and useful.
Though we may envy the assurance that comes with success, most of us are attracted by courage in defeat.There is what might be called the noble failure-the special heroism of aiming high, doing your best and then, when that proves not enough, moving bravely on.As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: "A mans success is made up of failures, because he experiments and ventures every day, and the more falls he gets, moves faster on ...I have heard that in horsemanship-a man will never be a good rider until he is thrown;then he will not be haunted any longer by the terror that he shall tumble, and will ride whither he is bound."
Sample 2
Nerds and Geeks
There is something very wrong with the system of values in a society that has only unkind terms like nerd and geek for the intellectually curious and academically serious.
We all know what a nerd is: someone who wears thick glasses and ugly clothes; someone who knows all the answers to the chemistry or math homework but can never get a date on a Saturday night.And a geek, according to "Websters New World Dictionary",is a street performer who shocks the public by biting off heads of live chickens.It is a revealing fact about our language and our culture that someone dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge is compared to such a freak.
Even at a prestigious educational institution like Harvard, anti-intellectualism is widespread: Many students are ashamed to admit, even to their friends, how much they study.