智慧背囊 品味人生-10-试金石（在线收听） |
| [00:04.63]The Touchstone 试金石 [00:06.87]When the great library of Alexandria burned, [00:10.58]the story goes, one book was saved. [00:13.76] But it was not a valuable book; [00:16.16]and so a poor man, who could read a little, bought it for a few coppers. [00:21.08]The book wasn’t very interesting, [00:23.71]but between its pages there was something very interesting indeed. [00:27.76]It was a thin strip of vellum on which was written the secret of the "Touchstone"! [00:33.34]The touchstone was a small pebble that could turn any common metal into pure gold. [00:39.25] The writing explained that it was lying among [00:42.53]thousands and thousands of other pebbles that looked exactly like it. [00:46.47] But the secret was this: [00:48.76]The real stone would feel warm, [00:51.17]while ordinary pebbles are cold. [00:53.47]So the man sold his few belongings, [00:56.42]bought some simple supplies, [00:58.61] camped on the seashore, [01:00.25]and began testing pebbles. [01:02.11]He knew that if he picked up ordinary pebbles [01:05.28] and threw them down again because they were cold, [01:08.35] he might pick up the same pebble hundreds of times. [01:11.51]So, when he felt one that was cold, [01:14.57] he threw it into the sea. [01:16.44]He spent a whole day doing this but none of them was the touchstone. [01:21.26]Yet he went on and on this way. [01:23.88] Pick up a pebble. [01:25.30] Cold—throw it into the sea. [01:27.49] Pick up another. Throw it into the sea. [01:30.55]The days stretched into weeks and the weeks into months. [01:34.72] One day, however, about midafternoon, [01:37.88] he picked up a pebble and it was warm. [01:40.62] He threw it into the sea before he realized what he had done. [01:44.34] He had formed such a strong habit of throwing each pebble into the sea [01:49.04]that when the one he wanted came along, [01:51.78] he still threw it away. [01:53.74]So it is with opportunity. [01:56.26]Unless we are vigilant, [01:58.12]it’s easy to fail to recognize an opportunity [02:01.51]when it is in hand [02:03.26]and it’s just as easy to throw it away. |
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