Helen Thayer, one of the greatest explorers of the 20th century, loves challenges. She says, “I like to see what's on the other side of the hill.” She has gone almost everywhere to do that.

    In 1988, at the age of 50, she became the first woman to travel alone to the North Pole. She pulled her own sled (雪橇) piled with 160 pounds of supplies, and during her trip no one brought her fresh supplies. Accompanied (陪伴) only by her dog Charlie, she survived cold weather and meetings with polar bears. In fact, Charlie saved her life when one of them attacked her. Near the end of her trip, a forceful wind blew away the majority of her supplies. The last week of the trip, she survived on a handful of nuts and a little water each day.

    Helen goes to challenging places not only for adventure, but also for education. Before her Arctic journey, she started a website called Adventure Classroom. On the site, she shares her adventures in order to motivate (激发) students. She explains, “Although kids often see the world in a negative way, without hope for their future, we work to inspire them to set goals, plan for success and never give up…” Helen grew up in New Zealand. Her parents were athletes and mountain climbers. Following how parents' example, she climbed her first mountain at 9. Later, she climbed the highest mountains in North and South America, the former USSR and New Zealand.

    In 1996, she took on another challenge-the Sahara Desert. She and her husband, Bill, walked 2,400 miles across it! In 2001, she and Bill traveled on foot from west to east through the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. They hope to travel in mainland China into Sichuan and Tibet to study pandas this year.

    Helen plans to continue taking trips. She'll use her colorations, writing, photography and environmental work to create programs for her Adventure Classroom website. She wants to inspire her students never to stop facing challenges!

    After returning from her round trip, the angry woman stood outside the ticket office of the station. “The railway owes me 12 pounds，” she said to Harry Jenks, the young man working at the office. “You sold me a ticket for May 22nd, but there was no ship from Jersey that night. So my daughter and I had to stay in a hotel. It cost me 12 pounds.”

    Harry was worried. He remembered selling the woman a return ticket. “Come into the office, Madam，” he said politely. “I'll just check the Jersey timetable for May 22nd.”

    The woman and her little girl followed him inside. She was quite right, as Harry soon discovered. There was no sailing on May 22nd. How could he have made such a careless mistake? He shouldn't have sold her a ticket for that day. Wondering what to do, he smiled at the child. “You look sunburnt.” he said to her. “Did you have a nice holiday in Jersey？”

    “Yes,” she answered, shyly. “The beach was lovely. And I can swim too!”

    “That's fine,” said Harry. “My little girl can't swim a bit yet. Of course，she's only three ...”

    “I'm four，” the child said proudly. “I'll be four and a half.”

    Harry turned to the mother. “I remember your ticket, Madam.” he said. “But you didn't get one for your daughter, did you？”

    “Er, well ...” the woman looked at the child. “I mean .., she hasn't started school yet. She's only four.”

    “A four­-year­-old child must have a ticket, Madam. A child's return ticket from Jersey costs .., let me see ... 13.50 pounds. The law is the law, but since the mistake is mine ...”

    The woman stood up, took the child's hand and left the office.

    I am sure we've all come across inspiring quotes（引言）that made us nod in agreement or made us think, "Wow, that's good quotes". But we end up going back to procrastinating（拖延）on whatever it was we were procrastinating on. So is it worthwhile to read these inspirational quotes? Well, that depends.

    Quotes, books, articles, audio programs… all of these things are just tools and they're only effective when you use them. I don't know about you but most quotes I read don't do anything for me. However, every now and then, I will come across one that will positively affect me in some way such as reminding me to be grateful, getting me to work out extra hard at the gym without being pressed by my wife, or never give up when things get tough.

      From my experience, reading quotes is more effective when you're actually trying to motivate yourself rather than just reading them for the sake of reading them. The second you feel the urge to take action, you'd better immediately get up off your chair and take action.

    These quotes aren't for everyone. If you have read tons of them and have never been motivated or had a positive change in the way you look at life or how you treat others, or these quotes don't help you to insist on doing something when you feel like giving up on it, then it's probably not worthwhile to read more of them. If you have done something a bunch of times and it's not giving you the results you want, don't keep doing it. Try something else.

    Now if you've found some value in reading these quotes in the past, continue to make them more effective by letting them guide your life.

    Whenever we see a button on a doorbell or on a remote, we may press it. This is true in most cases. But some buttons are actually fake(假的), like the "close" button on an elevator.

    Many people are in the habit of pressing the "close" button because they don't have the patience to wait for the elevator doors to shut. But according to experts, the buttons are a complete trick—the doors will not close any faster however hard you press.

    It started in the 1990s when the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, making sure that all elevators stayed open long enough so that people with disabilities could enter. Only firefighters and maintenance workers(维修工) can use the buttons to speed up the door-closing process if they have a code or special keys. But to normal elevator riders, the buttons aren't completely useless.

    According to psychologists, fake buttons can actually make you feel better by offering you a sense of control. Experts have showed that a lot of buttons that don't do anything exist in our lives for this same purpose. For example, pedestrian crosswalk buttons don't live up to their names. Pressing them used to help make the traffic signals change faster, but that was before computer-controlled traffic signals were introduced.

    But psychologists found it interesting that even when people are aware of these little "white lies". They still continue to push fake buttons because as long as the doors eventually close, it is considered to be worth the effort.

    That habit is here to stay, John Kounios, a psychology professor at Drexel University in the US, told The New York Times. "After all, I've got nothing else to do while waiting. So why not try the chance?"

    One day a mime(哑剧演员) is visiting the zoo and tries to earn some money as a street performer. As soon as he starts to draw a crowd, a zookeeper pulls him into his office. The zookeeper explains that the zoo's most popular attraction, a gorilla(大猩猩), has died suddenly and the keeper fears that attendance(出席人数) at the zoo will fall off. He offers the mime a job to dress up as the gorilla. The mime accepts.

    The next morning the mime puts on the gorilla suit and enters the cage before the crowd comes. He soon discovers he can sleep, play and make fun of people and he draws bigger crowds than he ever did as a mime — the job he likes but loses.

    However, with days going by, he begins to notice that the people are paying more attention to the lion in the cage next to his. Not wanting to lose the attention of his audience, he climbs to the top of his cage, crawls across a partition(隔墙), and dangles(悬挂) from the top to the lion's cage. The lion gets angry at this. The scene is a fuel to the crowd.

    At the end of the day he is given a raise for being such a good attraction — well, this continues for some time. The crowds grow larger, and the mime's pay keeps going up.

    Then one day when he is dangling over the lion he slides and falls. The mime is terrified. He starts screaming “Help me!”, but the lion is quick. The mime soon finds himself flat on his back looking up at the angry lion and the lion says, “Shut up you fool! Do you want to get us both fired?”

    The morning of March 2, 2012, was a busy one for the students in Mrs. Goodknight's class in Henryville, Indiana. There was morning meeting with poems to read, jokes to share, and tests to prepare for. "It was just an ordinary day," says student Lyric Darling, 12.

    At noon, while students played basketball under a sunny sky, a huge tornado (龙卷风) was forming 50 miles away. Around 2:25 p.m. 20 minutes before school was supposed to let out, a huge tornado touched down in Fredericksburg, 20 miles away. As word spread, parents rushed to the school. Teachers rushed to get kids onto buses or into waiting cars. By 2:45, the skies were darkening.

    "I was crying," says Lyric. "All around me, kids were crying." Two buses returned to the school with students whose parents had not been home. Teachers brought the kids to the office, where they all took cover under desks. Suddenly the power went out. And then the tornado attacked the school, filled with wood and trees and glass. The tornado was over the school for less than one minute. In that time, it almost completely destroyed the school. Teachers were about to lead the group out of the office when a second tornado was upon them. When it finally ended, the group made its way out of the building.

    Over the next few hours, parents arrived, overjoyed to find their children. The next day, it was clear: All of Henryville's people were safe.

    There were so many sad and frightening stories. Some students saw the tornado with their own eyes. Some lost their homes. But many described how the community (社区) came together to help and support each other. "You learn what's important," Mrs. Goodknight says.