雅思口语跟读训练1

Angela_passions

Work and Pleasure

To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at leasttwo or three hobbies, and they must all be real. It is no usestarting late in life to say: “I will take an interest in this or that.”Such an attempt only aggravates the strain of mental effort. Aman may acquire great knowledge of topics unconnected withhis daily work, and yet hardly get any benefit or relief. It is nouse doing what you like; you have got to like what you do.Broadly speaking, human being may be divided into three classes: those who are toiled to death,those who are worried to death, and those who are bored to death. It is no use offering themanual laborer, tired out with a hard week’s sweat and effort, the chance of playing a game offootball or baseball on Saturday afternoon. It is no use inviting the politician or the professional orbusiness man, who has been working or worrying about serious things for six days, to work orworry about trifling things at the weekend.

It may also be said that rational, industrious, useful human beings are divided into two classes:first, those whose work is work and whose pleasure is pleasure; and secondly, those whose workand pleasure are one. Of these the former are the majority. They have their compensations. Thelong hours in the office or the factory bring with them as their reward, not only the means ofsustenance, but a keen appetite for pleasure even in its simplest and most modest forms. ButFortune’s favored children belong to the second class. Their life is a natural harmony. For them theworking hours are never long enough. Each day is a holiday, and ordinary holidays when theycome are grudged as enforced interruptions in an absorbing vacation. Yet to both classes the needof an alternative outlook, of a change of atmosphere, of a diversion of effort, is essential. Indeed, itmay well be that those whose work is their pleasure are those who most need the means ofbanishing it at intervals from their minds.