我是在 得到 阅读的潘庆舲译本，在阅读的过程中，“If a man has faith, he will cooperate with equal faith everywhere;” 中的 faith 被翻译为了“信心”，我当时觉得这句话怪怪的，直到我查看原文（Apple 图书美区 Walden 免费）后，我还是觉得 faith 翻译为“信仰”可能会更好。横向对比发现，徐迟的译本也是“信心”，而我购买的实体书是杜先菊的译本，翻译为了“信仰”。
读完本书，得到平台的统计是 20 小时，199 条笔记。整理完所有笔记之后，想到既然拿到英文原版，就给前几个笔记把将英文对照加上，这样后续有空的时候把所有的都补上。但在整理的几句之后，索性将所有的英文笔记都整理了。
整理完了笔记，简单听了下 樊登读书 的介绍，了解到杜先菊的使用的版本注释跟原文基本达到了一比一之后，果断下单了实体书。因为虽然读完了，但是还有很多内容不明白。等后面闲下来，还需要反复阅读这本经典著作。要真想完全明白作者的各种明喻，暗喻，于我而言，要补充的知识可能这辈子都学不完。古希腊的各种神话人物，我一个也不了解。作者说：”那些还没有学会阅读古典作品原著的人，人类的历史知识肯定非常欠缺。“而我勉强只能用中文以外的英语阅读。显然 Walden，以我目前的水平，中文好多都理解不了，英文肯定就更加不能理解了。虽然添加了英文笔记，也只是我根据中文笔记在原著中寻找到的。
在读书的过程中，发现梭罗在一八四五年前就已经将简单的生活过的如此高雅，而我仅仅是通过时间的积累，意识到简单生活的美妙。而在追求简单的这条道路上，我还有很长的路要走。
年轻的时候，享受不了孤独，现在却越来越喜欢一个人的时光。因为在人群中，没有一个能理解我的人，反倒会更加孤独。一个人的时候，适合阅读，思考，并将自己的想法写下来。
对于生活的细致入微，往往会发现不一样的世界。梭罗不会盲目相信各种权威，会亲自测量各种数据，特别令我感觉到神奇的，他会测量湖底的模样。“湖底齐整匀称，与湖岸以及毗邻山脉保持着一致性，真是完美”。测量湖、测量山，以及他们的之间的横向对比。我在生活中的感受是，当家里的各种物品不能正常工作时，静下心来，仔细观察，很快就能解决。而十年前，我大概只会选择换新的，或者请求外援。
还有我真的佩服作者对于各种问题的深思。例如：拼命干活的目的是为了得到生存的物资，但是我们本可以不用这么拼命，所以就不需要这么多的必需品；又比如，不是人放牛，而是牛放人，因为牛的时间更自由；还有我们不是住在房间里，而是被关押着。又如猎物才是猎户最不起的朋友，因为没有猎物，哪儿来的猎户。
梭罗在观察一只小虫子的时候，发现它是如此谦卑，想要躲开他的目光，他突然意识到是不是也有更高维度的造物主在观察我们。这像极了，庄周梦蝶的故事，究竟是庄子醒来，蝴蝶死了，还是蝴蝶醒来，庄子死了。
梭罗在阅读这一章提到：“作者均是向着人类的心智说话，向着任何时代一切能理解他的人说话。尝试去理解一位哲学家真正想要说的话，真如他所说的，是一件让人筋疲力尽的运动，但是这永远都是值得的。而且需要我一次又一次的尝试，而我永远不会放弃。
读书笔记
我深信，如果人人都像我当时那样过简朴的生活，那么，偷窃和抢劫也不会发生。这样的事之所以发生，盖因社会上存在贫富不均。
超验主义思想的基本出发点，就是反对权威，崇尚直觉；其核心是主张人能超越感觉和理性而直接认识真理。
如今，我又是文明生活中的匆匆过客了。
At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.
大多数人，即便在这个相对自由的国家，仅仅因为无知和误导，要应对的是虚拟的忧虑、没完没了的粗活，却采撷不到更美好的生命果实。
Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.
他怎么会记得自己是无知呢——他靠的正是无知才成长起来——即使他时不时让自己的知识派上用场。
How can he remember well his ignorance–which his growth requires–who has often to use his knowledge?
人们在绝望中默默地过日子。所谓听天由命，就是一种根深蒂固的绝望。
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
不做绝望的事才是智慧的一种特征。
But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
今天人人附和或矛以默认的真理，明天有可能成为谬论，而这种谬论只不过是缥缈烟雾，有人却坚信那是雨云，会把甘霖洒向他们的农田。
What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields.
我们在一瞬间彼此两眼相望，难道还有什么比这更伟大的奇迹吗？
Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?
一代人抛弃上一代的功绩，就像抛弃搁浅了的船。
One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.
时代固然在进步，但它对人类生存的基本法则并没有多大影响，就像我们的骨骼同祖先的骨骼相比，也没有多大差别。
For the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.
一个人唯有站在我们称之为甘于清贫的有利地位上，方能成为人类生活的公正、睿智的观察家。
None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.
做一个哲学家，不仅要有深邃广博的思想，乃至于建立一个学派，而且要热爱智慧，按照智慧的要求，过一种简朴、独立、豁达大度与富有信心的生活。
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.
人既然那么牢牢地在大地上扎了根，为什么就不能同样恰如其分地升高到天空中去呢？——因为这是名贵植物的价值，是由远离地面、最终在空气和阳光下结出的果实来评定的，跟比较低等的菜蔬不可相提并论。
Why has man rooted himself thus the heaven above?–for the nobler plants are valued for the fruit they bear at least in the air and light, far from the ground, and are not treated like the humbler esculents, which, though they may be biennials, are cultivated only till they have perfected their root, and often cut down at top from this purpose, so that most would not know them in their flowering season.
我主要是向那些心怀不满的人说话，他们原本可以改善自己的生活，但他们老是徒然地诉说自己命运不济、时世艰难。
but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them.
不管天色阴晴，也不管白昼黑夜，我任何时候渴望及时改善自己眼下的境况，并在自己的手柄上刻下记号。站在过去与未来这两个永恒的真理的交汇点上，恰好就是现在这个时刻即脚尖抵着起跑线。
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.
说真的，太阳冉冉升起，我可从来没有具体地出过力，但切莫怀疑，只要赶在日出之前到达现场，其意义就非同小可。
It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to present at it.
他可没有觉察到，必须把篮子编得让别人觉得很值得买，或者至少让别人从心眼里认为买后很值得，要不然他还不如去编别的什么让人感到值得购买的玩意儿。
He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other’s while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy.
因为他考虑的，不是真正令人可敬的东西，而只是受到人们尊敬的东西。
for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected.
人们要是被剥去了衣服，还能在多大程度上保住各自相对的身份地位，这是一个挺有意思的问题。
It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes. Could you, is such a case, tell surely of any company of civilized men which belonged to the most respected class?
一个终于找到了工作的人，上班时用不着穿什么新衣服，对他来说，有一身旧衣服就行了，即便那套旧衣服在阁楼里已搁了不知有多久，积满了尘土。
A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period.
我说，要小心堤防的，是非得穿上新衣服方能办大事，更确切地说，倒不是单单穿新衣服的人。
I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made of fit?
人的换衣季节，犹如飞禽更换羽毛，必定是人生中的一个转折点。
Our moulting season, like that of the flowls, must be a crisis in our lives.
一个人穷虽穷，但一穿上用自己的辛苦钱置备的行头，难道还会没有聪明人去向他表示敬意吗？
where is he so poor that, clad in such a suit, of this own earning, there will not be found wise man to do him reverence?
巴黎的猴王戴上了一顶旅行帽，全美国的猴子便群起仿效。
The head money at Paris puts on a traveller’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.
人们不得不首先经过一台强有力的压榨机，把他们的旧观念从里头挤压出来，他们两腿再也不能马上直立起来，那时候，人群中就会有人忽地想出怪念头来，真不知道何时从卵子里头孵化出来的，哪怕烈火也烧不尽，而你的一切辛苦全都要了水漂。不管怎么说，我们可别忘了，有一种麦子是从埃及一具木乃伊那儿一直传到了我们手里。
They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again; and then there would be someone in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these things, and you would have lost your labor. Nevertheless, we will not forget that some Egyptian wheat was handed down to us by a mummy.
鸟儿在岩洞里不会歌唱，鸽子在鸽棚里不会觉得自己天真可爱。
Birds do not sing in caves, not do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots.
在这里，我无意比较租房子和买房之间孰优孰劣，但很明显，野蛮人拥有房子，是因为造价很低，而文明人通常租房子住，是因为买不起房子。
I do no mean to insist there on the disadvantage of hiring compared with owning, but it is evident that the savage owns his shelter because it costs so little, while the civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot afford to own it;
文明不会使房价太贵就可以造成质量较好的住房。
it muse be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly;
拥有多余的财产最大的好处就是储存资金，以防未来不时之需，我认为，就个人而言，主要是足够他支付自己的丧葬费罢了。
It may be guessed that I reduce almost the whole advantage of holding this superfluous property as a fund in store against the future, so far as the individual is concerned, mainly to the defraying of funeral expenses.
依靠在农场干活、真的能支付农场债务的人是如此之少，就算有，任何一个邻居都可以把这个人指名道姓说出来。
The man who has actually paid for this farm with labor on it is so rare that every neighbor can point to him.
尽管我们被各种奢侈品所包围，但跟野蛮人的成千种舒适相比，我们都是一贫如洗。
This is the reason he is poor; and for a similar reason we are all poor in respect to a thousand savage comforts, though surrounded by luxuries.
正如查普曼有诗写道——这虚伪的人类社会——为了尘世的宏伟，天上种种安乐像空气般稀溥。
As Chapman sings “The false society of men– for earthly greatness All heavenly comforts rarefies to air.”
因为我们的房子造的是一点也不实用，与其说我们住在里头，还不如说我们是被关押在里头。要躲开的坏邻居，恰恰是我们自己可鄙的“自我”。
It may still be urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them; and the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves.
如果文明人的追求并不比野蛮人的追求更有价值，如果文明人所花去的一生中大部分的时间，只是去获得那些粗劣的必需品和“舒适”的生活享受，那么，他干吗非得拥有野蛮人更好的住所呢？
And if the civilized man’s pursuits are no worthier than the savage’s, if he is employed the greater part of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former?
一个阶层的奢侈和另一个阶层的穷苦是互为消长的。一边是宫殿耸立，另一边则是济贫院和“沉默的穷人”。
The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. On the one side is the palace, on the other are the almshouse and “silent poor.”
贪图奢侈、挥霍成性，正是骄奢淫逸之徒开创的新时尚，众百姓趋之若鹜，唯恐落人之后。
It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd so diligently follow.
我们已然为尘世修建宅第，并为阴曹冥府修造坟墓。最美好的艺术作品里表达的，都是人类为自己摆脱这种精神状态而进行的搏斗，可我们的艺术效果只是使这种低迷的精神状态变得安逸，而把较为高昂的精神状态记得一干二净。
We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man’s struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten.
在我出了树林子、从铁路走回家的路上，只见大部分地方还是绵延不绝的黄沙堆，在灰蒙蒙的云气暮霭里微微闪光，铁路道轨在春天艳阳之下闪闪发亮，我听到云雀、小鹟和别的鸟儿在歌唱，跟我们在一起迎接新的一年。
There were some slight flurries of snow during the days that I worked there; but for the most part when I came out on to the railroad, on my way home, its yellow sand heap stretched away gleaming in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I heard the lark and pewee and other birds already come to commence another year with us.
在春回大地的日子里面，令人不快的冬天正在跟冻土一块儿消融，蛰伏的生命则开始自我舒展。
They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man’s discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself.
我现在知道，乃是从内部逐渐向外部形成的，是迎合了居住者的各种需要和性格，因为只有居住者才是独一无二的建筑师——它来自不知觉的真实与高贵，对于外表从来不予考虑。
I know has gradually grown from within outward, out of the necessities and character of the indweller, who is the only builder-out of some unconscious truthfulness, and nobleness, without ever a thought for the appearance and whatever additional beauty of this kind is destined to be produced will be preceded by a like unconscious beauty of life.
正如画家都知道，这个国家最耐人寻味的住宅通常是穷人那些毫无虚饰的简陋木屋和农舍。这些木屋和农舍之所以别具风姿，不是在外表上有什么与众不同，而是因为住在外表好似贝壳的房子里头的居民生活。同样有趣的，还有市民建在郊外的那些箱子形状的木屋，他们的生活有如想象一样简单而又随和，他们并没有竭力追求什么住房的风格效果。绝大多数建筑装饰都是形同虚设。
The most interesting dwellings in this country, as the painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log huts and cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of the inhabitants whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their surfaces merely, which makes them picturesque; and equally interesting will be the citizen’s suburban box, when his life shall be as simple and as agreeable to the imagination, and there is as little straining after effect in the style of his dwelling.
最花钱的东西，断断乎不是学生最需要的东西。
Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants.
学生经常逃避人人必不可缺的任何劳动，他得到的只是他所垂涎的闲暇和休息，就得到一种可耻而无益的空闲，而唯有让这种空闲结出硕果的经历偏偏没有得到。
The student who secures his covered leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.
青年人要是不赶快投入生活实践，怎么能更好地学会生活呢？
How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?
耗费生命中最美好的时光去挣钱，为了享受最不宝贵的时间里那一点可疑的自由。这使我想起了那个英国人，他最先跑到印度去发财，为了日后可以回英国，过上一种诗人船的生活。
The spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet.
我常常这样想，不是人在放牛，而是牛在牧人，反正前者有更多的自由。
I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer.
理智要比一座高得可攀月亮的纪念碑更值得流传下去。
One piece of good sense would be more memorable that a monument as high as the moon.
一个国家所开凿的岩石，十之八九只供它的坟墓使用，它把自己给活埋了。
Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward it tomb only. It buries itself alive.
有人认为酵母是面包的灵魂，填充面包细胞组织的精神，像女灶神维斯太的圣火一样被虔诚地保存下来。
Leaven, which some deem the soul of bread, the spiritus which fills its cellular tissue, which is religiously preserved like the vestal fire–some precious bottleful.
我们既然老在搬家，干吗不甩掉我们的家什，甩掉我们的脱皮。最后离开这个界域，到另一个置备新家具的界域，把老家具通通给烧掉呢？这就像有人把所有圈套都扣在自己腰带上，只要搬家经过撒下绳索的荒野时，不能不拽动那些绳索，从而被拽进自己的圈套里去。
Pray, for what do we move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuvioe: at last to go from this world to another newly furnished, and I leave this to be burned? It is the same as if all these traps were buckled to a man’s belt, and he could not move over the rough country where our lines are cast without dragging them–dragging his trap.
人死了，不外乎复归尘土罢了。
When a man dies he kicks the dust.
整个夏天，我漫游于群山之间，路见浆果就拣了起来，稍后又漫不经心把它们扔掉，好像在看守阿德托斯的羊群。
While my acquaintances went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I contemplated this occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills all summer to pick the berries which came in my way, and thereafter carelessly dispose of them; so, to keep the flocks of Admetus.
我倒是希望，在这个世界上，各不相同的人越多越好，可我又希望，每个人要谨小慎微，寻摸和追求他自己的方式，可不是他父亲的、他母亲的或他邻居的方式。
I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father’s or his mother’s or his neighbor’s instead.
仅仅从精确的视点来看，我们是聪明的，如同水手或逃亡的奴隶两眼盯着北极星，这一点就足以引导我们一辈子，也许在预定期间我们到达不了我们的港口，可断断乎不会偏离正确的航线。
It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but hat is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course.
如果一个人有信仰，那他无论到哪儿都会跟同样有信仰的人合作；如果他没有信仰，不管他与何人为伍，他都会继续你世界上其他人一样苟活着。
If a man has faith, he will cooperate with equal faith everywhere; if he has not faith, he will continue to live like the rest of the world, whatever company he is joined to.
单独出行的人可以今天说走就走，结伴旅行却要等到别人准备就绪，也许还得等上老长时间才能上路。
the man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off.
我断断乎不会阻拦任何一个人去发挥他的天才。这种事情我自己不做，但有人全心全意，终其一生地去做了，我就会对他说，哪怕世人很可能会有这样看法，管它叫做坏事，可他们也一定要坚持下去。
But I would not stand between any man and his genius; and to him who does this work, which I decline, with his whole heart and soul and life, I would say, Persevere, even if the world call it doing evil, as it is most likely they will.
有上千个人在砍罪恶的枝杈，只有一个人把罪恶之根给砍掉了。
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
正是假虔诚和蓄奴主拿出奴隶创造的利润的十分之一，给别的奴隶购买星期日的自由。有的人雇穷人帮厨，来显示自己对穷人的慈悲心。要是他们亲自下厨房干活儿，岂不是更有慈悲心吗？
It is the pious slave-breeder devoting the proceeds of every tenth slave to buy a Sunday’s liberty for the rest. Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if they employed themselves there?
人类里头善良的大伯大婶们，要比真正的圣灵父母更受尊敬。
The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed that its true spiritual fathers and mothers.
至于慈善事业应该得到的赞扬，我是不会加以贬损的，我仅仅是要求把公正给予所有用自己的生命和劳动为人类造福的人。
I would not subtract anything from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind.
我要的是好比让一个人能开花结果，让芳香从他那里向我飘过来，成熟果子就在我们的交往中芳香四溢。想必他的善良不是局部的、短暂的，而是持久的、绰绰有余，对他丝毫无损，也是下意识的，这是一种掩盖万恶的善行。
I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me. and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious.
每一种树都有一定和季节，到了那季节，才会茂长，过了那季节，便会凋落。唯有柏树，不为时间所限，四季常青，所以叫做自由。
Each has its appropriate produce, and appointed season, during the continuance of which it is fresh and blooming, and during their absence dry and withered; to neither of which states is the cypress exposed, being always flourishing; and of this nature are the azads, or religious independents.
因为一个人人总有许许多多事情，反正越是放得下来，也就越是富有。
for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
我一直知道，只要我让它自由发展，它就会带来预期的最丰美的收成。
I knew all the while that it would yield the most abundant crop of the kind I want, if I could only afford to let it alone.
要尽可能长时间地生活得自由自在、无牵无挂。把自己捆在农场上，无异于将自己投进大牢里。
As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the country jail.
你想要购置一座农场，脑子里务必多想想，切莫急吼吼地就买下；也不要怕累、怕麻烦，不去多看看，更不要以为绕着它转了一圈儿就够了。如果农场真的不错，那里你去得越是勤，你就会越是喜欢它。
When you think of getting a farm turn it thus in your mind, not to buy greedily; nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not think it enough to go round it once. The oftener you go there the more it will please you, If it is good.
人世间再也没有比自由地欣赏一望无际的地平线的人更快活。
There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon.
我们习惯于想象：在天体的某个遥远而神圣的角落，仙后座五亮星后面，远离喧哗和烦恼，总有一些罕见的令人愉快的地方。
We are wont to imagine rare and delectable places in some remote and more celestial corner of the system, behind the constellation of Cassiopeia’s Chair, far from noise and disturbance.
世上有过一个牧羊人，他的思想就像高山那样。他在山上的一群羊，时时刻刻把他来喂养。
There was a shepherd that did live,
And held his thoughts as high
As were the mounts whereon his flocks
Did hourly feed him by.
苟日新，日日新，又日新。
Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again.
反正没有灵感的白昼不会把我们带到比睡着生活层次更高些的地方去。
Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night.
一个人如果不相信每一天都有一个他还没有滥用过的、更早更神圣的黎明时刻，那他对生命早已绝望，正在寻摸一条沉沦黑暗的道路。
That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more scared, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way.
对那些与太阳同步的、富于弹性和生气勃勃的思维的人来说，一天之中的任何时间都是早晨。
To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men.
我们必须学会自己苏醒，使自己保持清醒，不靠机械的帮助，而是寄厚望于黎明，就算我们在酣睡之际，黎明也不会抛弃我们。
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.
每个人都应该使自己的生活，乃至于它的细节，跟他在最庄严紧急之际的深思熟虑相匹配。
Every man is tasked to makes his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
每一根枕木就是一个人，一个爱尔兰人，或者一个人北方佬，铁轨就铺在他们身上，他们身上又被黄沙覆盖，列车平平稳稳地从他们身上疾驶过去。
Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them.
在哲学家看来，一切所谓的“新闻”，全是闲扯淡，编辑新闻和阅读新闻的都是一些喝茶聊天的老妇人。
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
如果我们只是尊敬那种不可避免和有权利生存的事物，那么，音乐和诗歌将会在街头激起回响。
If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets.
永恒中确实存在真理和崇高。然而，所有这些时代、地点和事件，都在此时此地。
But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.
宇宙经常顺应我们的观念，不管我们走得快还是走得慢，反正已给我们铺好了道轨。
The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us.
如果你直立着，面对事实，你就会看到事实的两面都闪烁着阳光，好像是一柄老一代阿拉伯人使用的双刃短刀，感觉那利刃在剖开你的心脏和骨髓，于是你欣然告别人生。
If you stand right fronting and face to face a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a scimitar, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and narrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career.
智力是一把刀，它能洞察缝隙，剖开万物的奥秘。
The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things.
我们毕竟都是凡夫俗子，但在探究真理时，我们是不朽的，也不必害怕变故或意外。
In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident.
诗人米尔·卡玛·乌丁·马斯特说：“静心打坐，任凭神思驰骋在心灵世界，我从书中得到了莫大好处。一杯美酒足以使人陶醉，我读深奥学说如饮琼浆玉液，其乐无比。”
Says the poet Mir Camar Uddin Mast, “Being seated, to run through the region of the spiritual world; I have had this advantage in books. To be intoxicated by a single glass of wine; I have experienced this pleasure when I have drunk the liquor of the esoteric doctrines.”
读好书，就是说，要读名至实归的理想的书，这是一种高尚的锻炼，这种累得读者精疲力竭的锻炼，超过当今任何时尚的运动锻炼。
To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem.
不管演说家偶尔迸发出令我们赞赏不已滔滔不绝的辩才，但最高贵的书面语，通常隐藏在转瞬即逝的口语之后，或者凌驾于转瞬即逝的口语之上，如同繁星闪烁的苍穹隐藏在转瞬即逝的浮云后面。
However much we may admire the orator’s occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds.
演说家凭借转瞬即逝的灵感，向他面前的听众和那些能够倾听他人的演讲。作家需要更宁静的生活，那些激发演说家灵感的人群和事件反而使他分神，所以，他是向着人类的心智说话，向着任何时代一切能理解他的人说话。
The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and health of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.
书面文字是文物珍遗中的精品，比其他艺术品更与我们亲密，也更具有普遍性。
A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art.
那些还没有学会阅读古典作品原著的人，人类的历史知识肯定非常欠缺。
Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in which they were written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race;
荷马至今还从来没有用英文印行过，埃斯库罗斯也没有过，甚至维吉尔也都没有——这些大师的作品，写得这么优雅、这么坚实、这么壮丽，宛若晨曦。
Homer has never yet been printed in English, nor Aeschylus, nor Virgil even-works as refined, as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as the morning itself;
任何一个人，为了拾到一枚银币该有多费劲儿，可这儿有的是赛过黄金的文字，那是古代最聪慧的人说出来的。
Most men do not know that any nation but the Hebrews have had a scripture. A man, any man, will go considerably out of this way to pick up a silver dollar;
文盲有两种：一种是我们镇上目不识丁的老乡，一种是只读过儿童作品和适合阅读极低智力读物的老乡，这两种文盲究竟有什么显著区别，我承认，我还看不出来。
I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between illiterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects.
我可不想去恭维镇上的乡友们，也不想他们来恭维我，因为这样一来，我们谁都不会有长进。
I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for that will not advance either of us.
让我们拥有高贵的村镇居民，而不是贵族。如果有必要，我们宁可河上少造一座桥，绕着多走一些路，但在周围黑暗无知的深渊上，至少架起一座拱桥吧。
Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men. If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.
任何一种方法或训练，都无法替代永远保持警觉的必要性。
No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert.
顺应自然的日子是非常平静的，很少会被指责为好逸恶劳吧。
A man must find his occasions in himself, it it true. The natural day is very clam, and will hardly reprove his indolence.
我的生活本身已然成了我的娱乐，而且历久常新。它是一部多幕剧，没有结局。
my life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and without an end.
今年夏天的一个午后，我坐在窗子边，一群鹰在我的林中空地上空来回盘旋；野鸭子一个劲儿地疾飞，三三两两地映入我的眼帘，或者闲不住地落在我的屋子后头白皮松枝头上，当空叫唤；一只鱼鹰在波平似镜的湖上啄了一圈涟漪，叼走了一条鱼；一只水貂从我门前的沼泽地悄悄地溜出来，在湖岸边逮住了一只青蛙；芦苇鸟常在这里那里飞落，莎草实在不堪重负，也都被压弯了；在未了的半个钟头里，我听到了火车轰隆轰隆响声，一会儿沉寂下去，一会儿又响了起来，就像鹑鸡在扑棱着翅膀似的，把观光客从波士顿带到乡间来。
As I sit at my window this summer afternoon, hawks are circling about my clearing; the tantivy of wild pigeons, flying by two and threes athwart my view, or perching restless on the white pine boughs behind my house, gives a voice to the air; a fish hawk dimples the glassy surface of the pond and brings up a fish; a mink steals out of the marsh before my door and seizes a frog by the shore; the sedge is bending under the weight of the reedbirds flitting hither and thither; and for the last half-hour I have heard the rattle of railroad cars, now dying away and then reviving like the beat of a partridge, conveying travellers from Boston to the country.
印第安人山上长满浆果的乌饭树被采伐殆尽，盛产越橘的草地也被耙平，果实都运到城里去了。棉花上来了，布匹下去了；丝上来了，毛织品下去了；图书上去了，写作的智力去下降了。
All the Indian huckleberry hills are stripped, all the cranberry meadows are raked into the city. Up comes the cotton, down goes the wove cloth; up comes the silk, down goes the woollen; up come the books, but down goes the wit that writes them.
商业是出乎意料的自信、安详、机灵、有进取心，而且压根儿不知疲倦。
Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert, adventurous, and unwearied.
全世界无论哪个地方对勇敢的雄鸡全都相宜。它甚至比本地产的禽鸟要略胜一筹。它历来体质很好，音色洪亮，精神永不衰萎。
All climates agree with brave Chanticleer. He is more indigenous even than the natives. His health is ever good, his lungs are sound, his spirits never flag.
雪中不是没有通向前院大门的小路——而是压根儿没有门——没有前院——没有通往文明世界的路。
Instead of no path to the front-yard gate in the Great Snow-no gate–no front-yar–and no path to the civilized world.
凡是生活在大自然之中，心智还健全的人，就不可能会有极度的忧郁。
There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.
正在冥思苦想之际，纷纷细雨飘落下来了，我猛地意识到，与大自然默默地一来二往，没承想会如此甜美、如此友好，在淅沥的每一滴雨声中，在我屋子周围每一个声音和每一个景点中，都有一种无穷无尽和难以表述的友情，有如一种支援我的气氛，使我原先与人毗邻而居的念想已然一无可取，打那以后，我再也断断乎不曾有过那种想法了。
In the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in very sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since.
一种什么样的空间，才能把人与人们隔开，让他感受到孤独呢？我发觉，两条腿不管怎么使劲儿走，也不能让两颗心挨得更近些。
What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.
我们大多数人都把一些无关的，倏忽的枝节当作大事去做，实际上，它们才是使们分心的原因。
For the most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our distraction.
世间万物，不管好坏，都像激流似的的从我们身边逝去。我们还是浑然一体地融于大自然中。也许我是急流中的一块散流板，或者就是从高空俯瞰它的因陀罗。
We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more.
我发现，一天之中大部分时间独处，是有益于身心健康的。
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.
水天一色的湖，并不是蓝色的魔鬼，而是蓝色的天使。太阳是孤独的，除非天上乌云密布，有时候看上去好像有两个太阳，不过有一个是假的。上帝是孤独的——但魔鬼呢，他倒是一点也不孤独，他就有好多哥们，他还有大队人马。
And yet it has not the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters. The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone–but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion.
思想需要足够的空间，方可准备扬帆起航，按照一两条航线航行，最后到达目的港。
You want room for you thoughts to get into sailing trim and run a course or two before they make their port.
他之所以使我感兴趣，是因为他是那么安静，那么孤寂，而内心又是那么快乐，两眼流露着喜悦和满足的神情。
He interested me because he was so quiet and solitary and so happy withal; a well of good humor and contentment which overflowed at his eyes.
人们都说瓦尔登湖深不见底，而他们像瓦尔登湖一样，尽管也放有些浑浊不清。
who are as bottomless even as Walden Pond was thought to be, though they may be dark and muddy.
越是显得谦卑，反而越是高贵。起初我并不知道这是一种聪明策略取得的结果。
And, true enough, in proportion as he appeared to humble himself was he exalted. I did not know at first but it was the result of a wise policy.
因为我既没有牛马相助，也没有雇短工或者童工帮忙，更没有采用改良家具，所以我干活儿非常慢，这么一来，我就跟豆子相处得格外亲呢。
As I had little aid from horses or cattle, or hired men or boys, or improved implements of husbandry, I was much slower, and became much more intimate with my beans than usual.
豆子每天看见我肩扛锄头来救它们，痛歼它们的敌人，让战壕里头填满枯死的杂草。
Daily the beans saw me come to their rescue armed with a hoe, and thin the ranks of their enemies, filling up the trenches with weedy dead.
下一个夏天，我可不想费那么大的劲儿去种豆子和玉米，而是要播种诸如诚实、真理、简朴、信仰和纯真这一类的种子，只要这些种子还没有失落，我就要看它们会不会在这片土地上生长，能不能以较少的劳力与肥料来养活自己，因为它的肥力肯定没有消耗到长不好这些庄稼。
I will not plant beans and corn with so much industry another summer, but such seeds, if the seed is not lost, as sincerity, truth, simplicity, faith, innocence, and the like, and see if they will not grow in this soil, even with less toil and manurance, and sustain me, for surely it has not been exhausted for these crops.
真正的农夫每天完成自己的劳动，并不要求地里产出成品一股脑儿归他所有，他心里想的是，他奉献出的不仅是他第一个果子，而且还有他最后的一个果子。
The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but his last fruits also.
除非我们迷了路，或者除非我们失去了这个世界，我们这才开始发现自己，认识到我们的处境，以及我们各种联系的无限内涵。
Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
湖水时有涨落，但不管有没有规律或周期，都是无人知晓，尽管有好多人惯常都会不懂装懂。
The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not, and within what period, nobody knows, though, as usual, many pretend to know.
引人注目的是，湖水这种时涨时落，不管它有没有周期性，好像者需要好多年方能完成。
It is remarkable that this fluctuation, whether periodical or not, appears thus to require many year for its accomplishment.
就算我没钱，但富有阳光明媚的时光和凉爽歇夏的日子，供我尽情享受。
for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly;
唯有住在瓦尔登湖旁，我方走近上帝和天堂。
I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven, That I live to Walden even.
他喜爱的并不是果子的美，他认为，他的果子只有变成了美元，这才算成熟了。
Whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars; who loves not the beauty of his fruits, whose fruits are not ripe for him till they are turned to dollars.
一个高度文明的社会里，连人的的心脑都沤成了粪肥！仿佛上教堂去墓园去种土豆！原来规范农场就是这个德行。
Under a high state of cultivation, being manured with the hearts and brains of men! As if you were to raise your potatoes in the churchyard! Such is a model farm.
大自然远离尘嚣，独自欣欣向荣。你玷污了大地。还胡扯什么天堂！
She flourishes most alone, far from the towns where they reside. Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth.
入口是一处宜人的田野，在长满苔藓的果树之间，一条泛红的小溪在涓涓地流，麝鼠却在水边忽闪忽现，还有鲜蹦活跳的鳟鱼，也尽情在水中游来游去。
The entry is a pleasant field,
Which some mossy fruit trees yield
Partly to a ruddy brook,
By gliding musquash undertook,
And mercurial trout,
Darting about.
我平素不喝茶，不喝咖啡，不吃黄油，不饮牛奶，也不吃鲜肉，因此，我就用不着为了得到这些去干活儿；再有，我干活儿不太吃力，用不着吃得很多，所以，我的吃食费用也微不足道。可他呢，因为他一开始就要茶、咖啡、黄油、牛奶、牛排、那他就不得不拼命干活儿，来偿付这些些食开支，而且，他越是拼命干活儿，就越是要拼命吃喝，以弥补体力上的消耗——结果呢，他的开支越来越大。长此以往，确实难以承受，因为他总是没法得到满足，结果就这么着他的一生在这笔买卖中耗掉了。
that I did not use tea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so did not have to work to get them; again, as I did not work hard, I did not have to eat hard, and it cost me but a trifle for my food; but as he began with tea, and coffee, and butter, and milk, and beef, he had to work hard to pay for them, and when he had worked hard he had to eat hard again to repair the waste of his system–and so it was as broad as it was long, indeed it was broader than it was long, for he was discontented and wasted his life into the bargain; and yet he had rated if as a gain in coming to America, that here you could get tea, and coffee, and meat every day.
他们没有能耐采用最精锐的楔子，自然也楔入不了生活的巨大立柱，将它一一劈开，然后精细地刻上花纹——他们想到的是凑合着应对生活，就像人们应对棘手问题一样。
not having skill so split its massive columns with any fine entering wedge, and rout it in detail; – thinking to deal with it roughly, as one should handle a thistle.
我们每天都应该从远方、从奇遇、危险和发现中，带着新经验和新性格回家。
We should come home from far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day, with new experience and character.
我发现，至今仍然发现，自己内心深处有一种本能，想过一种更高级的生活，亦即所谓精神生活，对此大多数人都有同感。但我还有另一种本能，想归入原始阶层，过一种野性的生活。我对这两种本能都很尊重。
The wildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar. I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both.
渔民、猎户、樵夫等人在田野和森林里度过他们的一生，从某种意义上说，他们本人已成了大自然的一部分。
Fishermen, hunters, woodchopprs, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves,
当前正在发生变化，倒不是因为人们日益有人性，而是因为猎物在日益锐减，说不定猎户才是猎物们的最最了不起的朋友，保护动物协会也概莫能外。
But already a change is taking place, owing, not to an increased humanity, but to an increased scarcity of game, for perhaps the hunter is the greatest friend of the animals hunted, not excepting the Humane Society.
如果你满怀喜悦之情迎接白昼与黑夜，生活就像鲜花香草一样芳香四溢，而且更有弹性，更像繁星，更加不朽——那就你的成功。
If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal–that is your success.
我日常生活中的真正收获，好比晨昏之时天上色彩，触摸不到，难以言传。我得到的是一丁点儿尘埃，我抓住的仅仅是段彩虹罢了。
The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the time of morning or evening. It is a little stardust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
我觉得，我之所以极力反动长时间玩命地干活，乃是因为像这样干活儿逼得我也会玩命地吃、喝。
I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.
曾子曰：“心不在焉，视而不见，听而不闻，食而不知其味。”
Thseng-tsue, “one looks, and one does not see; one listen, and one dose not hear; one eats, and one does not know the savor of food.”
善是独一无二的，永远不亏本的投资。
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
孟子曰：“人之所以异于禽兽者几希，庶民去之，君子存之。“
“That in which men differ from brute beasts,” says Mencius. “is a thing every inconsiderable; the common herd lost it very soon; superior men preserve it carefully.”
贞洁是人类绽放中的花朵，所谓天赋，英雄主义，神圣等，不外乎是它开花后结出的果实。
Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it.
智慧和至纯源自力行，愚昧和淫荡则源自懒惰。
From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality.
本性是很难克服的，但本性必须克服。
Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be overcome.
崇高的品德使人的风貌立时变得高雅，而卑劣或淫荡又会使人立时沦为禽兽。
Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
夏天好像是一个离去的猎人，却留下了还在发光的余烬，而我就是这么着靠着这些余炉取暖过冬。
I thus warmed myself by the still glowing embers which the summer, like a departed hunter, had left.
十一月二十五日起，大地全是皑皑白雪，突然间我被冬日雪景包围住了。我万般无奈，只好躲进自己的小窝儿，巴不得在屋里和心里点燃起一簇旺亮的火堆。
The snow had already covered the ground since the 25th of November, and surrounded me suddenly with the scenery of winter. I withdrew farther into my shell, and endeavored to keep a bright fire both within my house and within my breast.
我觉得，正因为湖里浸泡过，这些木头才更好烧，仿佛经过水里浸泡过的松脂，在灯笼时更经烧一样。
I thought that they burned bettor for the soaking, as if the pitch being confined by the water, burned longer, as in a lamp.
哪怕是最最富有野性的运动，也跟人类一样，眷恋着舒适，眷恋着温馨，也正因为它们如此小心翼翼地筑了窝儿，它们方能安然越过寒冬存活了下来。
for even the wildest animals love comfort and warmth as well as man, and they survive the winter only because they are so careful to secure them.
傍晚时分，人们在过去这余，两眼凝望着火苗儿，会使白昼积存的人世杂念一一得到净化，可我再也不能坐下来守望火苗儿了。
The laborer, looking into it at evening, purifies his thoughts of the dross and earthiness which they have accumulated during the day. But I cloud no longer sit and look into the fire,
黑黝黝的孩子们压根儿想不到，他们在住宅背阴处插下只有两个芽眼的细枝，经过他们天天浇水，就这么深深地扎下了根，没承想活得比孩子们的岁数还大，而且活得比在后头它遮阴的宅子本身寿命更长，甚至比大人们的花园和果园沿革理悠久，在他们长大、去世后又过去了半个世纪，丁香花树却悄悄地把他们的故事讲给一个孤独的漫游者听——丁香花儿开得很美，而且，芳香四溢，和在第一个春天里开放一模一样。丁午花那种依然娇嫩、淡雅和欢快的色彩，深深地印在我的脑海里。
Little did the dusky children think that the punny slip with its two eyes only, which they stuck in the ground in the shadow of the house and daily watered, would root itself so, and outlive them, and house itself in the rear that shaded it, and grown man’s garden and orchard, and tell their story faintly to the lone wanderer a half-century after they had grown up and died–blossoming as fair, and smelling as sweet, as in that first spring. I mark its still tender, civil, cheerful lilac colors.
不管是怎么样的天气，都阻挠不了我去散步或外出，因为我经常为了践约起见，在最深的雪地里步行八英里或十英里，去跟一棵山毛榉，或者一棵黄桦树，或者松树林中的一个老相识会晤。
But no weather interfered fatally with my walks, or rather my going abroad, for I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines; when the ice and snow causing their limbs to droop, and so sharpening their tops, had changed the pines into fir tress
他说话时会动不动援引教会或国家的那些仁义道德，就像从牲口棚里拉出来一车粪肥似的。
and is as ready to extract the moral out of church or state as to haul a load of manure from his barnyard.
因为他没有向世界上任何制度起过誓，是个生来自由自在的性情中人。无论我们转向何处，好像天地都浑然一体了，因为他使湖光山色更显得更美丽了。
and effectually put the world behind us; for he was pledged to no institution in it, freeborn, ingenuus. Whichever way we turned, it seemed that the heavens and the earth had met together, since he enhanced the beauty of the landscape.
一回，我在村中园子里锄草，忽然一只麻雀落在我的肩头上待了一会儿。此时此刻，我觉得自己特别风光，即使佩戴过什么荣誉肩章，也都没法与之相比。
I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
不过，我想，就算我将一切向他和盘托出，恐怕他也不见得全都明白，因为我每次打算回答他的问题时，他都打断了我，说：”你在这儿干啥呀？“他丢掉了一只狗，却找到了一个人。
But I fear that he was not the wiser for all I told him, for every time I attempted to answer this questions he interrupted me by asking, “What do you do here?” He had lost a dog, but found a man.
说实话，连一只兔子都养不活的乡下必定是穷乡僻壤。
That must be a poor country indeed that dose not support a hare.
在这里，常年水波不兴，始终是一片静谧，就像黄昏时琥珀色的天空，这倒是跟水中居民的冷静而又和顺的气质息息相通。天空在我们的脚下，也在我们的头上。
there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet is well as over our heads.
它们没有松树那么绿，也没有岩石那么灰，更没有苍穹那么蓝，它们的色彩很可能是举世无双，像花朵，像宝石，俨然珍珠，是瓦尔登湖水中生物凝结的晶核或水晶。
They are not green like the pines, nor gray like the stones, nor blue like the sky; but they have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and precious stones, as if they were the pearls, the animalized nuclei or crystals of the Walden water. They, of course, are Walden all over and all through;
我真心感谢瓦尔登湖，这么深，这么纯洁，可以作为一种象征。既然有人相信无限，就必定有人相信有些湖是无底的。
I am thankful that this pond was made deep and pure for a symbol. While men believe in the infinite some ponds will be thought to be bottomless.
湖底齐整匀称，与湖岸以及毗邻山脉保持着一致性，真是完美。
The regularity of the bottom and its conformity to the shores and the range of the neighboring hills were so perfect that a distant promontory betrayed itself in the soundings quite across the pond.
如果我们了解大自然的一切法则，那我们需要的只有一个事实，或者是有关一个实际现象的描述，就可以举一反三，得出许多各具特色的结论来。
If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point.
我们对法则与和谐的认识往往局限于书籍的少数事例，但为数更多的法则，看似矛盾实则相互呼应，可惜未被我们察觉，正是这些法则产生一种无比神奇的和谐呢。
Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still move wonderful.
我的天哪！我在那里遇到了婆罗门教的仆人、梵天、毗湿奴和因陀罗的伴侣，些人还在恒河边上他的寺院里打坐念《吠陀经》，要不然就带着他的馅饼皮和水罐，栖息在一棵大树底下。
there I meet the servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug.
湖有它自身的规律，遵循这规律才会雷场大作，就好比花蕾到了春天定然绽开一样。大地复苏，到处生机盎然。最大的湖对大气的变化那么敏感，就像寒暑表管柱中的小小一滴水银似的。
Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should as surely as the buds expand in the spring. The earth is all alive and covered with papillae. The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube.
天气越来越暖和的时候，住在河边的人夜里会听到冰凌的坼裂声，那吓人的轰鸣像大炮一样，仿佛冰凌的锁链完全断裂了，不到一两天，只见它倏忽消融殆尽。像鳄鱼从泥沼中钻了出来，大地也随之震颤不已。
When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as lound as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.
数不清的沙子溪流纵横交错，展现出一种混合的产物，部分服从水流的规律，部分却遵循植被的法则。
As it flows it takes the forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot or more in depth, and resembling,
我在路基的一而看到的是毫无生气的侧面——因为太阳总是先照在一面的——另一面地是在个把钟头以内造成如此丰富多彩的叶饰，不由得深为感动，仿佛奇怪地意识到，我已站在创造了世界和我那个艺术家的实验室里——来到了他仍在继续创作的现场，看到了他正在路基那边大显身手，而且精力异常充沛，他的鲜活构思随处可见。
I am affected as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist who made the world and me–had come to where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his fresh designs about. I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the globe, for this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass as the vitals of the animal body.
我们这个地球不断超越自己，不断改变自己，在自己的轨道上扑棱翅膀。
The very globe continually transcends and translates itself, and becomes winged in its orbit.
整整一棵树只不过是一片叶子，河流是更大一些的叶子，它们的叶质和大地交错在一起，乡镇和地市则是它们叶肪上的虫卵。
The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils.
大地不仅仅是死气沉沉的历史的一个片段，像一部书那样一页一页交叠，让地质学家和考古学家去研究。它是活生生的诗歌，像树上的叶子，先于花朵，先于果实——它不是一个化石的地球，而是一个活生生的地球。
The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geolopists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit–not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.
小草像春火似的燃遍了半山腰——春天的雨带来了一片新绿——好似大地发出满腔热量，迎候太阳的回归。
The grass flames up on the hillsides like a spring fire–“et primitus oritur herba imribus primoribus evocata”
光溜溜的湖面上洋溢着欢乐和青春，仿佛在诉说着湖中鱼儿们的欢乐，以及湖岸上细沙的欢乐——好像是鱥（gui）鳞片上发出一片银色的光辉，整个湖俨然成了一条蹦乱跳的鱼。
It is glorious to behold this ribbon of water sparking in the sun, the bare face of the pond full of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it, and of he sands on its shore–a silvery sheen as from the scales of a leuciscus, as it were all one active fish.
每一个季节，对我们来说，似乎都是妙不可言。因此，春天的来临，就像鸿蒙初辟，宇宙创始，黄金时代到来了——
As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.
如果我们总是生活在当下，对眼前每一件事都善于利用，就像小草沾上一点儿露水也承认对自己有影响，莫将时间浪掷在弥补错失的机遇上，还认为我们在尽自己的职责，那么，我们应该说是幸福的。
We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confess the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty.
在一个令人愉快的春天早晨，人间的一切罪恶都得到了宽赦。
In a pleasant spring morning all men’s sins are forgiven.
我们必须看到自己的极限被突破，到从未漫游过的地方去自由地生活。
We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.
天下万物无知。毒药到头来不见得有毒，创伤也未必会致命。怜悯是很靠不住的，它必定是转瞬即逝，它所恳求的断断乎不会是一成不变。
The impression made on a wise man is that of universal innocence. Poison is not poisonous after all, nor are any wounds fatal. Compassion is a very untenable ground. It must be expeditious. Its pleadings will not bear to be sterotyped.
我们认为，如果我们的农场将栅栏通通拆掉，垒起了石墙，我们就给自己的生活定下了界限，我们的命运也就选定了。
Yet we think that if rail fences are pulled down, and stone walls piled up on our farms, bounds are henceforth set to our lives and our fates decided.
有的人毫不庄敬自重，却能侈谈爱国，为了少数人的利益而牺牲大多数人的利益。他们喜爱的是给自己的造墓的土地，而对赋予他们躯体以活力的精神却无动于衷。所谓爱国，仅仅是他们头脑里造出来的幻想罢了。
Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a pretty state, a humanmock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and scarifice the greater to the less, They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy whith the spirit which may still animate their clay.
在人们的精神世界里，同样存在着大陆和海洋，每个人只是这个精神世界里的一个半岛或一个岛屿，可他还没有去探索，却坐在一艘政府的大船里，经过寒冷、风暴和吃人生番的地域，航行了好几千英里，带上五百名水手和扑向来伺候他，这比独自一个去探索内心的海洋、大西洋和太平洋，毕竟要更容易得多——
but an indirect recognition of the fact that there are continents and seas in the moral world to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.
大地的表面是柔软的，人们一走过就会留下踪迹，同样，人的心路历程也会留下踪迹。不妨想一想，人世间的公路已给踩得多么坑坑洼洼、尘土飞扬，传统和习俗又形成了多么深的车辙！我想不乐意枯坐在船舱里边，还不如干脆站在世界的桅杆和甲板那里，因为那群山间月色溶溶的美景，我可以看得更真切。
The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains.
一个人只要充满自信地朝着梦想指引的方向前进，努力去过心中想象的那种生活，那他就会获得在平时意想不到的成功。
that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
他的生活越是简单，宇宙的法则也会显得越简单，孤独将不成其为孤独，贫困将不成其为贫困，懦弱也将不成其为懦弱。如果造了空中楼阁，是不会徒劳的，楼阁本该造在空中，现在是给它们打下基础的时候了。
In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
英国正在下大力气防止土豆腐烂，难道就不能下大力气医治大脑腐烂吗？大脑腐烂现象实在更普遍，因而更致命啊。
While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?
人们所喜爱的”纯洁“就像笼罩大地的雾霭，而不是凌驾于雾霭之上的蓝色太空。
The purity men love is like the mists which envelop the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond.
如果有人跟不上他的同伴们，也许是因为他听到的是另一种的鼓点。让他踩着自己听到的音乐节拍走路吧，不管这节拍是什么样，或者走得该有多远。
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer, Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
现在，他看到自己脚跟边堆满依然是崭新的刨花，觉得他和他的工作而言，时间的流逝只不过是一种幻觉。
And now he saw by the heap of shavings still fresh at his feet, that, for him and his work, the former lapse of time had been an illusion.
我们可以使事物美观，但到最后都不会像真理那样使我们受益，唯有真理持续令人满意。
No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last at the truth. This alone wears well.
任何真理都要比虚伪好。
Any truth is better than make-believe.
不管你的生活多少卑微，那也要面对它过日子，不要躲避它，也不要贬损它，生活毕竟还不像你那么要不得吧。
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.
一个人只要心地宁静，即使身在济贫院，也会像在宫殿里一样心满意足、思想愉快。
I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.
多余的财富只能购买多余的东西，而灵魂的必需品是用钱买不到的。
Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.
兴趣和谈吐多半是有关穿着打扮和举止风度，反正呆头鹅总归是呆头鹅，不管怎么个打扮它。
The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will.
那些最强烈地吸引我的东西，只要言之有理，我就喜欢对它们仔细掂量，琢磨研究，并且朝它们靠近——而不会拉住磅枰横杆，试图使它们的分量轻一些——不会假设一种情况，而是要按照它的实际情况办事。
I love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that which most strongly and rightfully attracts me–not hang by the beam of the scale and try to weigh less–not suppose a case, but take the case that is; to travel the only path I can, and that on which no power can resist me.
要把钉子钉到实处，钉得牢实，夜里醒来想想自己这活儿也管保挺满意——就像缪斯女神唤来了，你也不会觉得难为情，这样做，上帝才会帮你的忙，也唯有这样做，你的忙上帝才帮得上。
Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction–a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse. So will help you God, and so only.
我站在森林覆被上，看到松针之间爬行的一只虫子极力躲避我的视线，于是，我反躬自问，为什么它会有这些谦逊思想，躺着我把它的头藏起来？也许我是它的恩主，告诉它的族群一些可喜的信息。这里，我想到了那个更伟大的恩主与智者，也正在俯视我这个俨然虫豸呢。
As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and bide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect.
唯有我们清醒的时候，天光才大亮。天光大亮的日子多着呢，太阳不过是一颗晨星罢了。
The light which puts our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.