英語經典美文誦讀100篇：006.work and pleasure

[00:05.26]6.Work and Pleasure [00:11.51] To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, [00:18.80]and they must all be real. It is no use starting late in life to say: [00:24.76]“I will take an interest in this or that.”Such an attempt only aggravates the strain of mental effort. [00:33.76]A man may acquire great knowledge of topics unconnected with his daily work, [00:40.16]and yet hardly get any benefit or relief. It is no use doing what you like; you have got to like what you do. [00:51.22]Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: [00:57.49]those who are toiled to death, those who are worried to death, and those who are bored to death. [01:06.92]It is no use offering the manual labourer, tired out with a hard week’s sweat and effort, [01:14.46]the chance of playing a game of football or baseball on Saturday afternoon. [01:20.40]It is no use inviting the politician or the professional or business man, [01:25.65]who has been working or worrying about serious things for six days, to work or worry about trifling things at the weekend. [01:35.60]It may also be said that rational, industrious, useful human beings are divided into two classes: [01:44.11]first, those whose work is work and whose pleasure is pleasure; and secondly, [01:51.47]those whose work and pleasure are one. Of these the former are the majority. [01:59.79]They have their compensations. The long hours in the office or the factory bring with them as their reward, [02:07.44]not only the means of sustenance, but a keen appetite for pleasure even in its simplest and most modest forms. [02:18.29]But Fortune’s favoured children belong to the second class. Their life is a natural harmony. [02:26.51]For them the working hours are never long enough. [02:30.79]Each day is a holiday, and ordinary holidays when they come are grudged as enforced interruptions in an absorbing vacation. [02:41.63]Yet to both classes the need of an alternative outlook, of a change of atmosphere, of a diversion of effort, is essential. [02:51.77] Indeed, it may well be that those whose work is their pleasure [02:56.09]are those who most need the means of banishing it at intervals from their minds.

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