奧裏森·馬登 / Orison Marden
奧裏森·馬登（1848—1924），美國著名的成功學家。其創辦的《成功》雜誌在美國無人不曉，它通過創造性地傳播成功學改變了無數美國人的命運。他被公認為美國成功學的奠基人和最偉大的勵誌導師。
Are in the Hole
Understand these new words before you listen to this article.
1.inscription [in'skrip??n] n.銘文；碑文
2.motto ['m?t?u] n.箴言，格言，座右銘
3.endeavor [en'dev?] n.嚐試
4.spasmodic [sp?z'm?d?k] adj.**的，一陣陣的
5.vigilance ['v?d??l?ns] n.警覺；警惕；警戒
The significant inscription found on an old key—“If I rest, I rust”—would be an excellent motto for those who are afflicted with the slightest taint of idleness.Even the industrious might adopt it with advantage to serve as a reminder that, if one allows his faculties to rest, like the iron in the unused key, they will soon show signs of rust, and, ultimately, cannot do the work required of them.
Those who would attain the heights reached and kept by great men must keep their faculties polished by constant use, so that they may unlock the doors of knowledge, the gates that guard the entrances totheprofessions,toscience,art, literature, agriculture—every departmentof human endeavor.
Industry keeps bright the key that opens the treasury of achievement.If Hugh Miller, after toiling all day in a quarry, had devoted his evenings to rest and recreation he would never have become a famous geologist.The celebrated mathematician, Edmund Stone, would never have published a mathematical dictionary, never have found the key to science of mathematics, if he had given his spare moments to idleness.Had the little Scotch lad, Ferguson, allowed the busy brain to go to sleep while he tended sheep on the hillside, instead of calculating the position of the stars by a string of beads, he would never have become a famous astronomer.