托福阅读里的终极人生智慧
从1732年起，本杰明，富兰克林（Benjamin Franklin）每年出版一册年历，为使《历书》实用、趣味并兼，他在其中每处可利用的空白处都填之以各时代各民族的俗谚、格言，并大量引用培根等人的妙语，技痒难耐的时候，他也自我创造或润色现有，最后编成了大名鼎鼎的《穷理查智慧书》。也成为了我的必备厕所读物。
所以，这位美国的伟人总是以“格言贩子”的身份滋养着我的生命，如：
Most of human happiness comes not from the rare good fortune, but from the little gain every day.
人类的幸福，大多不是来自罕见的鸿运，而是来自每天的一点点所得。
—Benjamin Franklin
2021年就要结束，在年尾的日子，我遍览托福阅读的文章，斗胆学一学富兰克林《穷理查历书》，绞尽脑汁，在其中找到了一些隐藏着的“人生智慧”，博诸君一乐，也对近三百年前的智者致敬。
The early morning is not a particularly good time for gathering food, because it is dark, so visibility is lower and it is also cold, so many insects are still inactive.
———真题Bird Songs and Calls
早起的鸟儿没虫吃，早起的虫儿被鸟吃
Know yourself before you do
An individual with longer horns had a better chance of circumventing its opponents' horns and fatally wounding them than one with shorter horns, and females probably preferred to mate with winners of these contests rather than with losers, either because they liked what they saw in the male or because they liked the territory that the male could defend from competitors.
———真题Bisons and Humans
爱情制胜宝典：颜值 + 有房
Beauty and House makes love
In later years,Eli Whitney cultivated social and political connections through his status as a Yale alumnus and through his marriage. Although he had never made a gun in his life, through those connections he won a contract from the War Department in 1798 to make and deliver 10,000 muskets (firearms used by soldiers before the invention of the rifle) for the army in 1800 .
———真题Cotton Ginning and Interchangeable Parts
财富密码：娶对媳妇儿嫁对郎，上对学校选对行
A winner goes to the right bed and school
Indeed, the only theory with a proven track record of extending the life span of animals is the caloric restriction theory, which states that animals which consume calories just above starvation levels live significantly longer than the average.
———TPO：Research into Aging and Extending Life Span
要长寿，少吃肉
Be fatter，Die faster
To reduce potential tension between in-laws, he suggested, societies do one of two things. They may develop strict rules forbidding the persons involved ever to interact face to face (as do the Navajos, for example, in requiring a man to avoid his mother-in-law), or they may allow mutual disrespect and teasing between the in-laws.
———TPO：Functionalism
要想婚姻长，少见丈母娘
Stay away from COVID-19 and her mother
Of the many drones assembled, only 10 to 15 will actually mate with a queen during one of her mating flights. Each drone that is successful dies in the process, however, and a similar fate awaits drones that aren't successful; once mating is done, they will be expelled from their hives or killed.
———真题：Honeybee Society
色字头上一把刀
Love to death，out of breath
Foresters reasoned that dense stands of young trees would lead to intense competition for light and water, and that competition in the forest economy, just as in the industrial economy, would create vigorous individuals. Without competition, weaklings would result-or so the foresters reasoned. The opposite turned out to be true, unfortunately. Western conifers-trees with cones and needlelike leaves-do not thin themselves; without fires to thinto thin them, what resulted were not a few big trees but thickets of stunted trees all the same age.
———真题：Forest Managment in Bule Mountains
卷到深处自然平
Embrace rat race，enjoy running in place
In general, diversity, by itself, does not ensure stability. Mathematical models of ecosystems likewise suggest that diversity does not guarantee ecosystem stability—just the opposite, in fact. A more complicated system is, in general, more likely than a simple system to break down. A fifteen-speed racing bicycle is more likely to break down than a child’s tricycle.
———TPO：The Longterm Stability of Ecosysytems
抱朴守拙，行稳致远
Be simple，or crumble
When a group is relatively small and group evaluation is important, some members will even expend extra effort if they know that some of their coworkers are unwilling, unreliable, or incompetent to perform well.
———真题：Individual performance and the presence of others
人少事急，正好摸鱼
a free-rider knows the time
Almost all animals learn novel tasks more easily if they can observe a knowledgeable demonstrator, Biologist Tom Langen trained individual magpie jays to pry open a door on a box that contained food. Subsequently. birds whose social groups included a demonstrator learned how to open doors much more rapidly than birds whose groups did not. Indeed. birds in groups that lacked a demonstrator did not even realize that there was food in the boxes.
———真题：Imitation in Monkeys and Apes
要想学得好，老师不可少
A good teacher is a real shortcut
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猝不及防但很良心的小广告来啦：
如果你在自学托福不得其法，没有好老师的指导，欢迎了解我们的托福线上训练营！
