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[推荐]钱坤强大师的作品！大家看看英美教授几个能写出来？这是一篇托福命题作文，作者是功底非同小可的钱坤强大师！
这是新东方当年第一篇TOEFL作文的范文，是钱坤强大师应俞敏洪校长之邀，将其当年参加TOEFL考试时所写的文章凭着记忆复原出来的。十多年来，这篇文章在新东方几十万TOEFL学员和无数的大家会员中广为传诵，奉为经典。同行专家惊叹：“此文只可望，不可及。”
［大师简介］
1981年以江苏省外语类第二名，苏州地区第一名资格入上海复旦大学外文系英语语言文学专业。本科期间以全国英语专八第一名资格公派赴英留学，主修英国文学，辅修教育学，重点研究莎士比亚及现代英语诗歌。其间，获剑桥大学英语水平证书。硕士期间，专业为西方文学批评理论，英美诗歌，比较文学。1989-1991北京大学英语系攻读博士，专业为中古英语及文艺复兴时期的英国文学。
1991至今，在北京国际关系学院英语系任教，现为英语教授，英美文学及西方文论硕士研究生导师，国家留学基金委资助的加拿大高级访问学者。
钱坤强大师是我唯一崇拜的英语大师，英文功底极其深厚！钱大师学识渊博，作品文笔优美，句子结构变化万千，用词精当，意境深远。读钱大师的文章，是莫大的享受！
闲话不多说，请大家来欣赏大家的作品：
People should never be satisfied with what they have. They should always want something new and something different. Do you agree or disagree? Use your own reasons and specific examples to support your argument.
That people should never be satisfied with what they have and should always strive for something new and different seems to be a propensity inherent in human nature. We have all read in Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice that “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.” This only testifies to one aspect, which is also a necessary condition, of human existence.
On the most abstract level, the spirit of dissatisfaction constitutes the very force that has propelled human civilization forward in the course of human history. Stimulated by the thirst for knowledge from within and challenged by the harshness of the environment from without, man has evolved triumphantly from the most primitive to the most advanced and sophisticated. If it had contented our pristine ancestors to dwell in caves or to lead their nomadic life, they would have remained some mere vagabond creatures, lurking in the unfriendly forests and in the hostile wilderness, forever on the alert so as not to fall prey to some ferocious predators. Consequently we can safely conclude that it is precisely man’s inquiring mind and his aspiring nature that distinguish himself from other animals.
In the modern world, this insatiable desire on the part of mankind has given rise to the most spectacular development of science and technology. We know that, with all the material wealth we have accumulated, we can live a passable, even a well-to-do life. However, we are also fully aware that life of this kind is not the best. Therefore, we travel into the unknown depths of the universe to explore its mysteries and we undertake perilous expeditions to the South Pole under the hope of discovering alternative energy sources to compensate for those which we already have, but which are depleting at an alarming rate. Every single advance in science and technology is invariably the result of man’s incessant quest for the new, the different and the better.
Finally, the turn of the century has witnessed a sustained proliferation of “isms”, both in arts and in literature, such as Impressionism, Expressionism, Symbolism, Cubism, Fauvism, Surrealism, Structuralism and the like. Why? The reason is simple. This flourishing is a direct response to people’s discontent with hackneyed and stereotyped modes of expression whose expressiveness has been worn away by centuries of overuse. Appreciating classical masterpieces only, say, Mona Lisa by Da Vinci, is a dull job. By contrast, Picasso the cubist has expressed a profound truth in Guernica with a refreshingly avant-garde freshness and originality. The existing conditions are always being transcended by the new and the different.
Admittedly, there are possible exceptions to this general rule of dissatisfaction. An ancient Chinese saying that “those who constantly feel satisfied tend to be happy” is quite illustrative in this respect. But I would rather interpret this as implying that people’s sense of happiness and satisfaction results from what they have achieved, including what is new and what is different. After all, human beings are by no means the jackdaw in Aesop’s fable who could afford to indulge complacently but vainly in singing and dancing without knowing where his next meal would come from.
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发表于 2007-7-22 14:18:15
