英語經(jīng)典美文誦讀100篇：040.expressing one’s individuality
[00:13.73]A most curious and useful thing to realize is that one never knows the impression one is creating on other people.
[00:23.66]One may often guess pretty accurately whether it is good, bad, or indifferent -
[00:30.18]some people render it unnecessary for one to guess, they practically inform one -
[00:36.31]but that is not what I mean. I mean much more than that.
[00:42.46]I mean that one has one’s self no mental picture corresponding to the mental picture
[00:48.69]which one’s personality leaves in the minds of one’s friends.
[00:53.53]Has it ever struck you that there is a mysterious individual going around, walking the streets,
[01:01.14]calling at houses for tea, chatting, laughing, grumbling, arguing,
[01:07.53]and that all your friends know him and have long since added him up and come to a definite conclusion about him -
[01:17.06]without saying more than a chance, cautious word to you; and that that person is you?
[01:26.83]Supposing that you came into a drawing room where you were having tea,
[01:31.83]do you think you would recognize yourself as an individuality? I think not.
[01:41.11]You would be apt to say to yourself as guests do when disturbed in drawing rooms by other guests:
[01:48.42]"Who’s this chap? Seems rather queer. I hope he won't be a bore."
[01:55.11]And your first telling would be slightly hostile.
[01:59.48]Why, even when you meet yourself in an unsuspected mirror in the very clothes
[02:05.27]that you have put on that very day and that you know by heart,
[02:10.31]you are almost always shocked by the realization that you are you.
[02:16.88]And now and then, when you have gone to the mirror to arrange your hair in the full sobriety of early morning,
[02:24.45]have you not looked on an absolute stranger, and has not that stranger piqued your curiosity?
[02:32.59]And if it is thus with precise external details of form, colour, and movement,
[02:39.45]what may it not be with the vague complex effect of the mental and moral individuality?
[02:47.61]A man honestly tries to make a good impression. What is the result?
[02:53.66]The result merely is that his friends, in the privacy of their minds,
[02:59.68]set him down as a man who tries to make a good impression.
[03:04.93]If much depends on the result of a single interview, or a couple of interviews,
[03:11.08]a man may conceivably force another to accept an impression of himself which he would like to convey.
[03:19.76]But if the receiver of the impression is to have time at his disposal,
[03:25.57]then the giver of the impression may just as well sit down and put his hands in his pockets,
[03:33.51]for nothing that he can do will modify or influence in any way the impression that he will ultimately give.
[03:42.90]The real impress is, in the end, given unconsciously, not consciously; and further, it is received unconsciously,
[03:52.91]not consciously. It depends partly on both persons. And it is immutably fixed beforehand.
[04:00.73]There can be no final deception...
