📝 您未登录，登录后完成练习可保存成绩、查看最佳记录。
总字符
0
正确字符
0
错误字符
0
错误率
0.00%
耗时(秒)
0
速度 WPM
0
0 / 68
1However 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
2looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is.
3You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from
4the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the
5spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The
6town's poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. May be they are simply great enough to receive
7without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not
8above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb,
9like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them.
10Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society. If
11I 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
12my thoughts about me. The philosopher said: "From an army of three divisions one can take away its general, and put it
13in disorder; from the man the most abject and vulgar one cannot take away his thought." Do not seek so anxiously to be
14developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals
15the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty and meanness gather around us, "and lo! creation widens to our view." We are
16often reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth of Crœsus, our aims must still be the same, and our means
17essentially the same. Moreover, if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers,
18for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with the
19material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. You are
20defended from being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy
21superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul. I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into
22whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a
23confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries. My neighbors tell me of their adventures with
24famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no more interested in such things
25than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a
26goose is a goose still, dress it as you will. They tell me of California and Texas, of England and the Indies, of the
27Hon. Mr. ---- of Georgia or of Massachusetts, all transient and fleeting phenomena, till I am ready to leap from their
28court-yard like the Mameluke bey. I delight to come to my bearings,--not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a
29conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may,--not to live in this restless, nervous,
30bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating? They are
31all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and
32Webster is his orator. I love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that which most strongly and rightfully attracts
33me;--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
34the only path I can, and that on which no power can resist me. It affords me no satisfaction to commence to spring an
35arch before I have got a solid foundation. Let us not play at kittly-benders. There is a solid bottom every where. We
36read that the traveller asked the boy if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had. But
37presently the traveller's horse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, "I thought you said that this bog
38had 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
39and quicksands of society; but he is an old boy that knows it. Only what is thought, said, or done at a certain rare
40coincidence is good. I would not be one of those who will foolishly drive a nail into mere lath and plastering; such a
41deed would keep me awake nights. Give me a hammer, and let me feel for the furring. Do not depend on the putty. Drive a
42nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction,--a
43work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse. So will help you God, and so only. Every nail driven should
44be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work. Rather than love, than money, than fame,
45give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and
46truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices. I thought
47that there was no need of ice to freeze them. They talked to me of the age of the wine and the fame of the vintage; but
48I thought of an older, a newer, and purer wine, of a more glorious vintage, which they had not got, and could not buy.
49The style, the house and grounds and "entertainment" pass for nothing with me. I called on the king, but he made me wait
50in his hall, and conducted like a man incapacitated for hospitality. There was a man in my neighborhood who lived in a
51hollow tree. His manners were truly regal. I should have done better had I called on him. How long shall we sit in our
52porticoes practising idle and musty virtues, which any work would make impertinent? As if one were to begin the day with
53long-suffering, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes; and in the afternoon go forth to practise Christian meekness and
54charity with goodness aforethought! Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This generation
55inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris
56and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and literature with satisfaction.
57There are the Records of the Philosophical Societies, and the public Eulogies of Great Men! It is the good Adam
58contemplating his own virtue. "Yes, we have done great deeds, and sung divine songs, which shall never die,"--that is,
59as long as we can remember them. The learned societies and great men of Assyria,--where are they? What youthful
60philosophers and experimentalists we are! There is not one of my readers who has yet lived a whole human life. These may
61be but the spring months in the life of the race. If we have had the seven-years' itch, we have not seen the
62seventeen-year locust yet in Concord. We are acquainted with a mere pellicle of the globe on which we live. Most have
63not delved six feet beneath the surface, nor leaped as many above it. We know not where we are. Beside, we are sound
64asleep nearly half our time. Yet we esteem ourselves wise, and have an established order on the surface. Truly, we are
65deep thinkers, we are ambitious spirits! As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor,
66and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and hide its
67head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of
68the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect.
🎉 全部完成！共 68 行