读英语美文不仅能够增长大家的常识也能提升英语阅读水平，假如你还在英语阅读的路途上，可以来这里读一读英语美文，今天为大伙推荐的英语美文是：生活的艺术。
The art of living is to know when to hold fast and when to let go. For life is a paradox: it enjoins us to cling to its many gifts even while it ordains their eventual relinquishment. The rabbis of old put it this way: “A man comes to this world with his fist clenched, but when he dies, his hand is open.”
生活的艺术在于了解什么时间追求，什么时间舍弃。由于生活就是一个矛盾体：它要大家紧紧抓住它赐予大家的生命之礼，然后最后又让它们从大家手中跑掉。老先生们说：“大家紧握着拳头来到这个世界上，离开这个世界时却摊开了双手。”
Surely we ought to hold fast to life, for it is wondrous, and full of a beauty that breaks through every pore of God’s own earth. We know that this is so, but all too often we recognize this truth only in our backward glance when we remember what was and then suddenly realize that it is no more.
当然大家应该紧紧把握生活，由于它美妙得不可思议，充满了从上帝的每一个毛孔里蹦出来的美。大家都了解这一点，但大家常常只有在回首往事时才会想去过去，才会忽然意识到过去永远地消逝了，才会承认这个道理。
We remember a beauty that faded, a love that waned. But we remember with far greater pain that we did not see that beauty when it flowered, that we failed to respond with love when it was tendered.
大家都记得美的褪去，爱的老去。但大家更痛苦地记得美正艳时，大家却没发现，爱正浓时，大家却没回话。
Here then is the first pole of life’s paradoxical demands on us: Never too busy for the wonder and the awe of life. Be reverent before each dawning day. Embrace each hour. Seize each golden minute.
这就是生活对大家自己自相矛盾需要的第一步：永远不要由于忙碌而忽视了它的奇妙和庄严。对即将来临的每一天，大家都要心怀敬意，拥抱没一小时，抓住每一分钟。
Hold fast to life... but not so fast that you cannot let go. This is the second side of life’s coin, the opposite pole of its paradox: we must accept our losses, and learn how to let go.
抓住生活，但不要抓得太紧，以至你放不下手。这就是生活像硬币一样也有另一面，也是生活矛盾的另一极：大家需要同意舍弃，并且掌握如何让它过去。
This is not an easy lesson to learn, especially when we are young and think that the world is ours to command, that whatever we desire with the full force of our passionate being can, nay, will, be ours. But then life moves along to confront us with realities, and slowly but surely this truth dawns upon us.
掌握这类并不是易事。尤其是年少轻狂的时候，大家自觉得是世界的主宰者，觉得只须充满激情地全力追求，就能得到所有。然而，事实并不是这样。只有在面对种种现实时，大家才会日渐没了解这个道理。
At every stage of life we sustain losses—and grow in the process. We begin our independent lives only when we emerge from the womb and lose its protective shelter. We enter a progression of schools, then we leave our mothers and fathers and our childhood homes. We get married and have children and then have to let them go. We confront the death of our parents and our spouses. We face the gradual or not so gradual waning of our strength. And ultimately, as the parable of the open and closed hand suggests, we must confront the inevitability of our own demise, losing ourselves as it were, all that we were or dreamed to be.
在生活的每个阶段，大家都会蒙受损失——并且在这一过程中成长。只有在脱离母体.失去庇护所时，大家才会开始独立的生活。大家不断地升学，接着又离开爸爸妈妈，离开儿时的故乡。继而，大家结婚生子，然后又放下让我们的子女出去闯荡。伴随爸爸妈妈和配偶的相继去世，大家也渐渐或者非常快衰老。最后，正如双手张开与紧握这一寓言所说，大家需要面对自己的死亡，失去原来的自我，失去大家拥有过或者憧憬过的所有。
词语：
eventual [ɪˈvɛntʃʊəl] 最后的，结果的，终于的
relinquishment [ri'liŋkwiʃmənt] 取消;让渡
wondrous [ˈwʌndrəs] 奇异的，美妙的，让人惊叹的
recognize [ˈrɛkəɡˌnaɪz] 认出，辨别；承认；确认
赏析完了美文，别忘了我们的目的还是学英语哟，大伙在平常必须要培养阅读的习惯。
