高级英语6 Paraphase-期末考试 复习答案

Unit 2 The Fine Art of Putting Things Off

Michael Demarest

1"Never put off till tomorrow," exhorted Lord Chesterf i eld in 1749, "what you can do today." That the elegant earl never got around to marrying his son's mother and had a bad habit of keeping worthies like Dr. Johnson cooling their heels f or hours in an anteroom attests to the f act that even the most well-intentioned men have been postponers ever. Quintus Fabius Maximus, one of the great Roman generals, was dubbed "Cunctator " (Del ayer) f or putting off battle until the last possible vinum break. Moses pleaded a speech def ect to rationalize his reluctance to deliver Jehovah's edicts to Pharaoh. Hamlet, of course, raised procrastination to an art f orm.

2The world is probably about evenly divided between delayers and do-it-nowers. There are those who prepare their income taxes in February, prepay mortgages and serve precisely planned dinners at an ungodly 6:30 p.m. The other half dine happily on lef tovers at 9 or 10, misplace bills and f ile for an ext ension of the income tax deadline. They seldom pay credit-card bills until the apocalyptic voice of Diners threat ens doom from Denver. They postpone, as Faustian encounters, visits to barbershop, dentist or doctor.

3Y et f or all the trouble procrastination may incur, delay can of ten inspire and revive a creative soul. Jean Kerr, author of m any successf ul novels and plays, says that she reads every soup-can and jamjar label in her kitchen bef ore settling down to her typewriter. Many a writer f ocus es on almost anything but his task—f or example, on the Coast and Geodetic Survey of Maine's Frenchman Bay and Bar Harbor, stimulating his imagination with names like Googins Ledge, Blunts Pond, Hio Hill and Burnt Porcupine, Long Porcupine, Sheep Porcupine and Bald Porcupine islands.

4From Cunctator's day until this century, the art of postponement had been virtually a monopoly of the military ("Hurry up and wait"), diplomacy and the law. In f ormer times, a British proconsul f aced with a native uprising could comf ortably ruminate about the situation with Singapore Sling in hand. Blessedly, he had no nattering Telex to order in machine guns and f resh troops. A U.S. general as late as World War II could agree with his enemy counterpart to take a sporting day off, loot the villagers' chickens and wine and go back to battle a day later. Lawyers are among the world's most addicted postponers. According to Frank Nathan, a nonpost-poning Beverly Hills insurance salesman, "The number of attorneys who die without a will is amazing."

5Even where there is no will, there is a way. There is a diff erence, of course, between chronic procrastination and purposef ul postponement, particularly in the higher echelons of business. Corporate dynamics encourage the caution that breeds delay, says Richard Manderbach, Bank of America group vice president. He notes that speedy action can be embarrassing or extremely costly. The data explosion f ortif ies those seeking excuses f or inaction—another report to be read, another authority to be consulted. "There is always," says Manderbach, "a delicate edge between having enough inf orm ation and too much."

6His point is well taken. Bureaucratization, which f lourished amid the growing burdens of government and the great er complexity of soci ety, was designed to smother policymakers in blankets of legalism, compromise and reappraisal—and thereby prevent hasty decisions f rom being made. The centralization of government that led to Watergate has spread to economic institutions and beyond, making procrastination a worldwide way of lif e. Many languages are studded with phrases that ref er to putting things of f—from the Spanish ma?ana to the Arabic bukra fil mishmish(literally "tomorrow in apricots," more loosely "leave it f or the sof t spring weather when the apricots are blooming").

7Academe also takes high honors in procrastination. Bernard Sklar, a University of Southern Calif orni a sociologist who churns out three to f ive pages of writing a day, admits that "many of my f riends go through agonies when they f ace a blank page. There are all sorts of rationalizations: the pressure of teaching, responsibilities at home, checking out the latest book, looking up another f ootnote."

8Psychologists maintain that the most assiduous procrastinators are women, though many psychologists are (at $50-plus an hour) pretty good delayers themselves. Dr. Ralph Greenson, a U.C.L.A. prof essor of clinical psychiatry (and Marilyn Monroe's onetime shrink), takes a f airly gentle view of procrastination. "To many people," he says, "doing something, confronting, is the moment of truth. All f rightened people will then avoid the moment of truth entirely, or evade or postpone it until the last possible moment." To Georgia State Psychologist Joen Pagan, however, procrastination may be a kind of subliminal way of sorting the important f rom the trivial. "When I drag my f eet, there's usually some reason," says Fagan. "I f eel it, but I don't yet know the real reason."

9In f act, there is a long and honorable history of procrastination to suggest that many ideas and decisions may well improve if postponed. It is something of a truism that to put of f making a decision is itself a decision. The parliamentary process is essentially a system of delay and deliberation. So, f or that matter, is the creation of a great painting, or an entree, or a book, or a building like Blenheim Palace, which took the Duke of Marlborough's architects and laborers 15 years to construct. In the process, the design can mellow and marinat e. Indeed, hurry can be the assassin of elegance. As T.H. White, author of Sword in the Stone, once wrote, time "is not meant to be devoured in an hour or a day, but to be consumed delicat ely and gradually and without haste." In other words, pace Lord Chesterf i eld, what you don't necessarily have to do today, by all means put of f until tomorrow.

Unit3. Walls and Barriers --Eugene Raskin

1My f ather's reaction to the bank building at 43rd Street and Fif th A venue in New Y ork City was immediate and def inite: ― Y ou won't catch me puttin g my money in there!" he declared." Not in that glass box!"

2Of course, my f ather is a gentleman of the old school, a member of the generation to whom a good deal of modern architecture is unnerving; but I suspect—I more than suspect, I am convinced—that his negative response was not so much to the architecture as to a violation of his concept of the nature of money.

3In his generation money was thought of as a tangible commodity—bullion, bank notes, coins—that could be hef ted, carried, or stolen. Consequently, to attract the custom of a sensible man, a bank had to have heavy walls, barred windows, and bronze doors, to aff irm the f act, however untrue, that money would be saf e inside. If a building’s design made it appear impregnable, the institution was nec essarily sound, and the meaning of the heavy wall as an architectural symbol dwelt in the prevailing attitude toward money, rather than in any aesthetic theory.

4But that attitude toward money has of course changed. Excepting pocket money, cash of any kind is now rarely used; money as a tangible commodity has largely been replaced by credit, a bookkeeping-banking matter. A def icit economy, accompanied by huge expansion, has led us to think of money as a product of the creative imagination. The banker no longer offers us a saf e, he offers us a service—a servi ce in which the most valuable elements are dash and a creative f l air f or the invention of large numbers. It is in no way surprising, in view of this change in attitude, that we are witnessing the disappearance of the heavy-walled bank. The Manufacturers Trust, which my f ather distrusted so heartily, is a great cubical cage of glass whose brilliantly lighted interior challenges even the brightness of a sunny day, while the door to the vault, far f rom being secluded and guarded, is set out as a window display.

5Just as the older bank asserted its invulnerability, this bank by its architecture boasts of its imaginative powers. From this point of view it is hard to say where architecture ends and human assertion begins. In fact, there is no such division; the two are one and the same.

6It is in the understanding of architecture as a medium f or the expression of human attitudes, prejudices, taboos, and ideals that the new architectural criticism departs f rom classical aesthetics. The latter relied upon pure proportion, composition, etc., as bases f or artistic judgment. In the age of sociology and psychology, walls are not simply walls but physical symbols of the barriers in men’s minds.

7In a primitive society, for example, men pictured the world as large, fearsome, hostile, and beyond human control. Theref ore they built heavy walls of huge boulders, behind which they could f eel themselves to be in a delimited space that was controllable and saf e; these heavy wall s expressed man’s fear of the outer world and his need to f ind protection, however illusory. It might be argued that the undeveloped technology of the period precluded the construction of more delicate walls. This is of course true. Still it was not technology, but a f earf ul attitude toward the world, which made peopl e want to build walls in the f irst place. The greater the f ear, the heavier the wall, until in the tombs of anci ent kings we f ind structures that are practically all wall, the feat of dissolution being the ultimate f ear.

8And then there is the question of privacy—f or is has become questionable. In some Mediterranean cultures it was not so much the world of nature that was f eared, but the world of men. Men were dirty, prying, vile, and dangerous. One went about, if one could afford it, in guarded litters, women went about heavily veiled, if the went about at all. Ones’ house was surrounded by a wall, and the rooms f aced not out, but in, toward a patio, expressing the prevalent conviction that the beauties and values of li f e were to be f ound by looking inward, and by engaging in the intimate activities of a personal as against a public lif e. The rich intricacies of the decorative arts of the period as well as its contemplative philosophies are as illustrative of this attitude as the walls themselves. 9We f eel different today. For one thing, we place greater reliance upon the control of human hostility, not so much by physical barriers, as by the conventions of law and social practice—as well as the availability of motorized police. We do not cherish privacy as much as did our ancestors. We are proud to have our women seen and admired, and the same goes f or our homes. We do not seek solitude; in fact, i f we f ind ourselves alone f or once, we f lick a switch and invite the whole world in through the television screen. Small wonder, then, that the heavy surrounding wall is obsolete, and we build, instead, membranes of thin sheet metal or glass.

10The principal f unction of today’s wall is to separate possi bly undesirable outside air from the controlled conditions of temperature and humidity which we have created inside. Glass may accomplish this f unction, though there are apparently a good many people who still have qualms about eating, sleeping, and dressing under conditions of high visibility; they demand walls that will at least give them a sense of adequate screening. But these shy ones are a vanishing breed. The Philip Johnson house in Connecticut, which is much admired and widely imitated, has glass walls all the way around, and the only real privacy is to be f ound in the bathroom, the toilette taboo being still unbroken, at least in Connecticut.

11To repeat, it is not our advanced technology, but our changing conceptions of ourselves in relation to the world that determine how we shall build our walls. The glass wall expresses man’s conviction that he can and does master nature and society. The ―open plan‖ and the unobstructed view are consistent with his f aith in the eventual solution of all problems through the expanding eff orts of science. This is perhaps why it is the most ―advanced‖ and ―f orward-looking‖ among us who live and work in glass houses. Even the f ear of the cast stone has been analyzed out of us.

From: T. Cooley, pp.194-199

Nothing in lif e is more exciting and rewarding than the sudden f lash of

– not only changed, but changed f or the better.答; The most inspiring and gratif ying f act of li f e is the unexpected spark of enlightenment that makes you dif ferent and a better person than bef ore.

2\ He came across the street, f inally, muf f l ed in his ancient overcoat, shapeless f elt hat pulled down over his bald head, looking more like an energetic gnome than an eminent psychiatrist. 答: At last he walked over from the other side of the street wrapped in his old-fashioned overcoat, his bald head covered by a shapeless f elt hat. He looked like a dwarf ish old man f ull of energy rather than a well-known psychiatrist.

3\ The woman who spoke next had never married because of a sense of obligation to her widowed mother; she recalled bitterly all the marital chances she had let go by. 答: The next speaker on the tape was a woman who had remained single because she thought she was obliged to take care of her mother who was a widow. She still remembered and told others miserably about all the chances of marriage she had missed.

4\ In the end, if you let it become a habit, it can become a real roadblock, an excuse f or not trying any more. 答;Eventually, if you f orm a habit of saying ―if only‖, the phrase can really turn to an obstruction, providing you with an excuse for giving up trying anything at all.

5\ …you never got out of the past tense. Not once did you mention the f uture.

答：you are always thinking of the past, regretting and lamenting. You did not look f orward to what you can do in the f uture at all.

6\ ―My, my,‖ said the Old Man slyly. ―If only we had come down ten seconds sooner, we’d have caught that cab, wouldn’t we?‖ I laughed and picked up the cue. ―Next time I’ll run f aster.‖答：The Old Man said to me trickily, using the phrase ―if only‖ on purpose, ―If only we’d got here ten seconds earlier, we’d have caught the cab.‖ I laughed and understood what he meant. So I f ollowed his advice and said, ―Next time I’ll run f aster‖.

1\ Moses pleaded a speech defect to rationalize his reluctance to deliver

edict to Pharaoh. Hamle t. 答; Moses justif ied his unwillingness to pass Jehovah’s order to Pharaoh, saying that he was ―slow of speech‖.

2\ Y et f or all the trouble procrastination may incur, delay can of ten inspire and revive a creative soul. 答; Delay leads to problems. However, in many cases, it can of ten stimulate the creativity in an artist。

3\ He notes that speedy action can be embarrassing or extremely costly. 答; He points out that hastiness may give rise to decision which turns out to be humiliating or

expensive.

4\ Bureaucratization, which f lourished amid the growing burdens of government and the great complexity of society, was designed to smother policymakers in blankets of legalism, compromise and reappraisal – and thereby prevent hasty decisions from being made. 答; Excessive red-tape(官样文章；繁文缛节) developed because public administration was expanding in scope and because society was growing more and more complicated. In this sense, red-tape helped those in charge of policy to be f ully engaged in enormous amount of paperwork and judgment, thus making it impossible or an immature decision to result。

5\…many of my f riends go through agonies when they f ace a blank page. 答;…many of my friends have a hard time the moment they attempt to put pen to paper.

1\ Of course, my f ather is a gentleman of the old school, a member of the

modern architecture is unnerving; but I suspect —I more than suspect, I am convinced—that his negative response was not so much to the architecture as to a violation of his concept of the nature of money.答：Brought up in the old tradition, my f ather is naturally not prepared to accept the idea of modern architecture; his objection to it, I would assume, indeed I should say I am pretty sure, is not a result of his strong dislike of the physical building itself, but rather that of his ref usal to change his attitude towards money.

2\ If a building’s design made it appear impregnable, the institution was necessarily sound, and the meaning of the heavy wall as an architectural symbol dwelt in the prevailing attitude toward money, rather than in any aesthetic theory. 答;If a building was made to look invulnerable, it would be accordingly regarded as reliable, and the signif icance of the thick walls would be measured not by their artistic value, but by their seeming ability to provide a saf e location f or money.

3\ In a primitive society, f or example, men pictured the world as large, fearsome, hostile, and beyond human control. 答; People in a primitive society, f or example, saw the world as an enormous planet f ull of f ear, hatred and disorder.

4\ The principal f unction of today’s wall is to separate possibly undesirable outside air from the controlled conditions of temperature and humidity which we have created inside.答; Today a wall serves m ainly as a physical means to protect the desired atmosphere inside from being disturbed by anything unwelcome outside。

5\ To repeat, it is not our advanced technology, but our changing conceptions of ourselves in relation to the world that determine how we shall build our walls.答; Again, the decisive f actor that can inf luence the design of a wall is not the advancement of science and technology, but our ever-changing attitude towards our place in this world.

1\ He was a man of exuberant fancy, and, withal, of an authority so irresistible

his will, he turned his varied f ancies into f acts. 答; He was a man rich in whimsies, and intolerant of any act bold enough as to challenge his authority. When his mind caught upon something, absurd as it might be, he would do everything to make sure that it was done in the way he wished.

2\ When every member of his domestic and political systems moved smoothly in his appointed course, his nature was bland and genial; but whenever there was a little hitch, and some of his orbs got out of their orbits, he was blander and more genial still, f or nothing pleased him so much as to make the crooked straight, and crush down uneven places. 答; When all subjects behaved in such a manner as they were told to, he could be gentle and kind. And he could even be more so, if anything not conf orming to what he expected should occur, because that off ered a great chance f or him to see the undesirable removed, a thing he was most delighted in doing.

3\ He could open either door he pleased: he was subject to no guidance or inf luence but that of the af orementioned impartial and incorruptible chance. 答; He enjoyed total freedom to choose what to do: he was not directed or inf luenced by anyone as to which door to open. The only thing that was decisive in terms of his f ate was the above-mentioned chance, granted to all the accused alike.

4\ This element of uncertainty lent an interest to the occasion which it could not otherwise have attained. 答; The f act that no one could tell f or sure what might happen (to the accused) made this f orm of trial more attractive than any other f orm of justice.

5\ Thus the masses were entert ained and pleased, and the thinking part of the community could bring no charge of unfairness against this plan; f or did not the accused person have the whol e matter in his own hands. 答;Thus people enjoyed coming here to watch, and those guided by reason in the society could not possibly question the f ai rness of this f orm of trial; f or was it not the f act that all the accused were given equal chances to make decisions upon their own destiny?

第五课1\This semi-barbaric king had a daughter as blooming as his most f lof id,…….as his own.

答:this semi-barbaric king had a daughter as exuberant as the wildest of his notions, a daughter who possessed a nature as f ierce and tyrannical as his own.

2、of course, everybody knew that the deed with………had been down.

答it was ,of course, known to all that he was guilty of the offense of conducting an aff air with the princess.

3\.......but the king would not think of allowing……delight and satisf action.

答even though the king was well aware that the love affair had taken place, he would still ref use to let the normal method of deciding guilt or innocence be disturbed, because he was extremely enthusiastic about his way of settling matters of this kind.

4\......but gold, and the power of a woman’s will, had brought the secret to the princess.答but because she had the money, and above all, because her determination was so irresistible, the princess was able to get access to the secret.

5\he understood her nature, and his soul was assured…….lookers-on, even to the king. 答he knew her so well that he was perfectly positive that she would never cease to search f or the secret, which remained unknown to all other spectators, even to the king himself.

第六课1、there seems to be a general assumption that brilliant people cannot….order to do their best. 答it is generally believed that a colorless li f e can freeze a creative mind and that only a colorf ul lif e can inspire a man to creative work.

2\the outstanding characteristic of man’s…..into momentous consequences.

答; one of the wanders human creativity work is that man can make f ull use of even insignif icant f eelings to produce f or-reading results.

3\an event f ul life exhausts rather than stimulates. 答a lif e f ull of diversions stops man’s creativity instead of activating it.

4\it is usually the mediocre poets,…..release their creative f low. 答only literary artists of an average type rely on excitements in lif e as a source f or their creative work.

5\people who f ind dull job……with themselves when at leisure.

答people who are unabl e to see how to be patient with repetitions work are usually those who are unable to see where to f ind f un in lif e when it comes to relaxation.

1、one of Socrates’ main pedagogical acts was to be ugly--……f ull of

lif e really was.答the contrast between Sociates’outward ugliness and his inner strengths sieved to draw the attention of his native and handsome f ollowers to the fact that there were many such strange contrasts in the world.

2\we nor only split of f—with the greate st…..also intelligent, talented, good.

答; we tent to resist the idea that inside beauty (character, intellect) can coexist will outside beauty looks in one single person, and there in f act taken .aback to meet one who is beautif ul both inside and outside

3\associating beauty with women has put beauty….defensive, morally.

答.beauty, when considered in relation to a female, involves a judgment of not only looks but also character and intellect, making itself a much more controversi al issue .

4\ if a woman does real work-and even if….she still works at being attractive.

答.however successf ul a woman may be in her career as a politician, lawyer, doctor, businesswoman, or whatever, she unavoidable feels compelled to admit to making an eff ort to look attractive.

5\o ne could hardly ask f or more important evidence….tale, the oppression of women.答.The biased attitude towards women—the long story of which is both lamentable and tough able—is the most powerf ul proof as to how harmf ul it can be to judge a person by ref using to put into consideration both inner beauty and outer beauty together.

1、besides, the whole toff ee ness of toffees…act of having eaten it.

f orm that, the entire attraction of the toffee is gone without your noticin

g it when you actually go so f ar as to eat it.

2\so, f or me, one of the keenest pleasures of……not the satisfaction.

答.as f ar as I am concerned, the greatest pleasure appetite can off er is the longing f or what I have yet to achieve rather than to f eel content with what I have already achieved. 3\which is why I would carry the preservation of…..by satiation and over-doing it.

答.my intentional denial of f ood might be explained by the urge to keep the desire f or f ood const antly afresh in me, which means so much to me that I must handle it with the greatest care so as not to spoil it by overindulgence.

4\a day of f asting is not f or me just a puritanical….moment of supreme indulgence.

答.an occasional sel f-denial of f ood is in no sense an indication that I ref use to accept a pleasure where I can. On the contrary, it is a dood way to prepare me f or pleasure that is even greater f or being enjoyed inf requently.

5\lif e is short is and precious and appetite is ……..is a sort of death.

答.Lif e is a brief journey, which is worth treasuring. Appetite is one of the things that accompanies and protects the journey.