题型:阅读理解 题类:常考题 难易度:普通
河南省师范大学附属中学2018届高三上学期英语开学考试试卷
Silence is unnatural to man.He begins life with a cry and ends it in stillness.In between he does all he can to make a noise in the world,and he fears silence more than anything else.Even his conversation is an attempt to prevent a fearful silence.If he is introduced to another person,and a number of pauses occur in the conversation,he regards himself as a failure,a worthless person,and is full of envy of the emptiest-headed chatterbox(喋喋不休的人). He knows that ninety nine percent of human conversation means no more than the buzzing of a fly,but he is anxious to join in the buzz and to prove that he is a man and not a waxwork figure(蜡塑人像).
The aim of conversation is not,for the most part,to communicate ideas;it is to keep up the buzzing sound.There are,it must be admitted,different qualities of buzz;there is even a buzz that is as annoying as the continuous noise made by a mosquito.But at a dinner party one would rather be a mosquito than a quiet person.Most buzzing, fortunately,is pleasant to the ear,and some of it is pleasant even to the mind.He would be a foolish man if he waited until he had a wise thought to take part in the buzzing with his neighbors.
Those who hate to pick up the weather as a conversational opening seem to me not to know the reason why human beings wish to talk.Very few human beings join in a conversation in the hope of learning anything new.Some of them are content if they are merely allowed to go on making a noise into other people's ears,though they have nothing to tell them except that they have seen two or three new plays or that they had food in a Swiss hotel.At the end of an evening,during which they have said nothing meaningful for a long time.They just prove themselves to be successful conservationists.
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