毋庸置疑，你依赖于律师和股票?纪人的关照，列车员和信号员使你快速从一处转移到另一处，警察在街道上巡逻以保护你的安全；但是，对于那些你路上偶遇，使你开怀一笑的人，难道你一点儿也不心存感激吗？纽科姆上校的帮忙，却使他的朋友破了财；弗雷德·贝哈姆向人借衬衣，却是一个诡计。但是比起巴恩斯先生，他们两位倒是更值得结交。虽然福斯塔夫既不庄重又不很诚实，但是我想我能说出一两个沮丧的巴à巴。我想，如果没有他们，这个世界会更好。
哈兹里特曾提及，与那些懂得卖弄的朋友相比，他对诺思科特的责任感更强，尽管诺思科特对他并未有任何所谓的恩惠之举，因为他坚持认为，一个好的同伴就是最大的施恩者。我知道世界上有一些人，除非以痛苦和苦难为代价赐予他们恩惠，否则他们便不会有感恩之心。这真是一种无礼的性情。一个人可能会给你写一封六页的信，同你漫无边际地闲谈，或者你开心地用半个小时读他的一篇文章，或许还有所收获。如果这篇手稿是他用心血写成的，就像魔鬼的契约一样，你是否会觉得更有恩于你？如果你的来信者诅咒你的刁难，你真的觉得你就会对他更加感激吗？乐趣比责任更能让人受益，因为就像仁慈的品质一样，由于没有任何矫饰，能给人加倍的福佑。
忙中偷闲的能力，暗示的是一种广泛的爱好和强烈的个性。乐趣比责任更能让人受益，它就像仁慈的品质一样，没有任何矫饰，却能给人加倍的福佑。
无论你的生活如何卑微
However Mean Your Life Is
[美国]亨利·大卫·梭罗/Henry David Thoreau
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. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man' s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town' s poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. Maybe they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society. If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me. The philosopher said: "rom an army of three divisions one can take away its general, and put it in disorder; from the man the most abject and vulgar one cannot take away his thought." Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty and meanness gather around us, "and lo! Creation widens to our view." We are often reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth of Croesus, our aims must still be the same, and our means essentially the same. Moreover, if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. You are defended from being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.
I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries. My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will. They tell me of California and Texas, of England and the Indies, of the Hon. Mr. — of Georgia or of Massachusetts, all transient and fleeting phenomena, till I am ready to leap from their court-yard like the Mameluke bey. I delight to come to my bearings — not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may — not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator. 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. It affords me no satisfaction to commence to spring an arch before I have got a solid foundation. There is a solid bottom everywhere. We read that the traveler asked the boy if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had. But presently the traveler' s horse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, "I thought you said that this bog had a hard bottom". "So it has," answered the latter, "but you have not got half way to it yet." So it is with the bogs and quicksands of society; but he is an old boy that knows it. Only what is thought, said, or done at a certain rare coincidence is good. I would not be one of those who will foolishly drive a nail into mere lath and plastering; such a deed would keep me awake nights. Give me a hammer, and let me feel for the furring. Do not depend on the putty. Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfactory — a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse. So will help you God, and so only. Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work.
