发布时间 : 星期二 文章新编英语教程Unit 1教案更新完毕开始阅读4f67eff6cfc789eb162dc841
Book 6 Unit 1
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9 A chill rain was beginning to fall outside, but his office was warm and comfortable and familiar: book-lined walls, long leather couch, signed photograph of Sigmund Freud, tape recorder by the window. His secretary had gone home. We were alone.
10 The Old Man took a tape from a flat cardboard box and fitted it onto the machine. \tape,\are not identified, of course. I want you to listen to the recordings and see if you can pick out the two-word phrase that is the common denominator in all three cases.\look so puzzled. I have my reasons.\
11 What the owners of the voices on the tape had in common, it seemed to me, was unhappiness. The man who spoke first evidently had suffered some kind of business loss or failure; he berated himself for not having worked harder, for not having looked ahead. 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. The third voice belonged to a mother whose teen-age son was in trouble with the police; she blamed herself endlessly.
12 The Old Man switched off the machine and leaned back in his chair. \times in those recordings a phrase is used that's full of subtle poison. Did you spot it? No? Well, perhaps that's because you used it three times yourself down in the restaurant a little while ago.\the box that had held the tape and tossed it over to me. \saddest words in any language.\
13 I looked down. Printed neatly in red ink were the words: If only.
14 \ou'd be amazed,\this chair and listened to woeful sentences beginning with those two words. 'If only,' they say to me, 'I had done it differently — or not done it at all. If only I hadn't lost my temper, said the cruel thing, made that dishonest move, told that foolish lie. If only I had been wiser, or more unselfish, or more self-controlled.' They go on and on until I stop them. Sometimes I make them listen to the recordings you just heard. 'If only,' I say to them, 'you'd stop saying if only, we might begin to get somewhere!'\
15 The Old Man stretched out his legs. \trouble with 'if only,'\he said, \that it doesn't change anything. It keeps the person facing the wrong way — backward instead of forward. It wastes time. In the end, if you let it become a habit, it can become a real roadblock, an excuse for not trying any more.
16 \take your own case: your plans didn't work out. Why? Because you made certain mistakes. Well, that's all right: everyone makes mistakes. Mistakes are what we learn from. But when you were telling me about them, lamenting this, regretting that, you weren't really learning from them.\
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18 \the future. And in a way — be honest, now! — you were enjoying it. There's a perverse streak in all of us that makes us like to hash over old mistakes. After all, when you relate the story of some disaster or disappointment that has happened to you, you're still the chief character, still in the center of the stage.\
19 I shook my head ruefully. \
20 \promptly. \5
Book 6 Unit 1
that supplies lift instead of creating drag.\21 22 23 24
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\ \Next time?\
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keeps saying 'if only' to me, he's in trouble. But when he looks me in the eye and says 'next time,' I know he's on his way to overcoming his problem. It means he has decided to apply the lessons he has learned from his experience, however grim or painful it may have been. It means he's going to push aside the roadblock of regret, move forward, take action, resume living. Try it yourself. You'll see.\
25 My old friend stopped speaking. Outside, I could hear the rain whispering against the windowpane. I tried sliding one phrase out of my mind and replacing it with the other. It was fanciful, of course, but I could hear the new words lock into place with an audible click.... 26 The Old Man stood up a bit stiffly. \man. Always is. Now, if you will help me find a taxi, I probably should be getting on home.\
27 We came out of the building into the rainy night. I spotted a cruising cab and ran toward it, but another pedestrian was quicker.
28 \caught that cab, wouldn't we?\
29 I laughed and picked up the cue. \
30 \it,\cried the Old Man, pulling his absurd hat down around his ears. \it exactly!\
31 Another taxi slowed. I opened the door for him. He smiled and waved as it moved away. I never saw him again. A month later, he died of a sudden heart attack, in full stride, so to speak. 32 More than a year has passed since that rainy afternoon in Manhattan. But to this day, whenever I find myself thinking \only\I change it to \time\Then I wait for that almost-perceptible mental click. And when I hear it, I think of the Old Man.
33 A small fragment of immortality, to be sure. But it's the kind he would have wanted.
Words and Phrases
1. prospect n. sth. one expects to happen; a possibility or likelihood of sth. happening
e.g. I look forward to the prospect of being a volunteer doing social work in the Great
Northwest.
There is a reasonable prospect of reaching the trapped miners within the next 24 hours. prospects pl. — opportunities
e.g. Most people are not quite optimistic about the prospects for/of employment.
Don't think too much how the job pays now. What really matters is that it holds good prospects.
2. eminent adj. famous and respected within a particular profession, e.g. eminent
doctor/surgeon/scientist, etc.
3. invariable adj. never changing
e.g. The invariable question the mother asked her child after school every day was: \
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Book 6 Unit 1
everything go today?\
4. proceed v. begin a course of action
e.g. After the preparations had been made, we proceeded to draft the plan. 5. at some length: (formal) in some detail
e.g. She described to us her trip to New Zealand at some length.
cf. at length — after a long time; at last
e.g. He thought over the mathematical problem day and night and solved it at length.
6. false move: an unwise action that turns out to be a mistake and brings one risks or failure
e.g. Be very careful with the designing of the plan; a false move and it will fall through.
7. berate v. (formal) scold or criticize angrily because of a fault
e.g. Don't berate anyone just because he has made a mistake. Don't we all make mistakes from time to time?
8. lament v. feel or express deep sorrow (for or because of sth.)
e.g. One should not lament the past mistakes, but should try to do better later.
9. ruefully adv. regretfully
e.g. He faced his recent failure ruefully.
10. promptly adv. quickly, at once
e.g. He always responded to the customers' requests promptly.
11. grim adj. harsh, unpleasant, dreadful
e.g. He was depressed when he heard the grim news that two-thirds of the workforce might be discharged.
Notes
1. the sudden flash of insight that leaves you a changed person: the quick and spontaneous
understanding that makes you a different person
a flash of insight — an understanding that comes to one suddenly and quickly
leave (with object and adverbial or complement) — cause (object) to be or to remain in a particular state or position
e.g. Buying an expensive car has left the family penniless. The children were left in the care of the nanny.
2. chewing the bitter cud of hindsight: thinking repeatedly about the painful realization of
what had happened
Literally cud means \mouth for further chewing\反刍的食物). When an animal chews the cud, it chews further the partly digested food. When a person chews the cud, he thinks about something
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Book 6 Unit 1
reflectively.
e.g. He chewed the cud for a long while before he set pen to paper.
hindsight — understanding the reasons for an event or situation only after it has happened e.g. The accident could have been avoided with the wisdom of hindsight.
With hindsight they should not have left their little daughter alone in the country villa.
3. he still carried a full case load: he still kept himself fully occupied in the treatment of his
patients
case load — the number of patients a doctor has to deal with
4. I had long since ceased to be surprised at his perceptiveness.: I had long before come to
know that he was good at perceiving how others thought and felt; so I was not at all surprised
when he noticed my troubled state.
perceptiveness (n.) — unusual ability to notice and understand; awareness and understanding e.g. We all admired his perceptiveness; he was always so quick to respond to a new situation.
5. With a kind of melancholy pride: Apparently the author was still proud of his \
considerable importance\ 6. common denominator: This is a term used in mathematics, meaning \
of the denominator of several fractions\公分母). In this context, it means \shared by the three persons\if only was used by all three of them.
7. all the marital chances she had let go by: all the chances for her to get married she had
missed
let (sth.) go by — lose sth.
e.g. The short course is a good opportunity for you to learn a skill. Don't let it go by.
8. There's a perverse streak in all of us that makes us like to hash over old mistakes.:
There's an obstinately unreasonable quality in all of us which makes us enjoy bringing up old
mistakes again for consideration.
perverse — (of a person or one's actions) showing an obstinate desire to behave in an unreasonable way
e.g. We just couldn't understand her perverse decision against the majority.
streak — an element of a specified kind in one's character （性格行为的）倾向, an often unpleasant characteristic
e.g. Her streak of stubbornness makes her difficult to get along with.
hash over — (slang) bring up (sth.) again for consideration
e.g. What has been done cannot be undone. Don't hash over past mistakes. Cheer up and try to do better next time.
9. substitute a phrase that supplies lift instead of creating drag: use a phrase (in place of if
only) that provides encouragement that pushes you forward instead of discouragement that pulls you backward
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