It is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the language read. The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. The other is the maturity and experience of that; if that is our mother tongue, this is our father tongue, a reserved and select expression, too significant to be heard by the ear, which we must be born again in order to speak.
即使你能讲原著国家的语言，依然不够，因为在口语和文字之间存在着明显的差别；一种是听和说的语言，另一种是阅读和书写的语言。口语不过是经常变化的声音、舌音或土语，几乎是原始的，我们能像野蛮人一样从母亲那里不知不觉地学会；文字语言则是前一种语言成熟、精炼的结果；如果说前一种语言是我们的母语，那么后一种语言就是我们的父语。这种语言含蓄而精炼的表达，不是耳朵所能明辨出来的。为了使用这种语言，我们必须从头学起。（刘绯译）
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. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; - not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.
书籍是文化遗产的宝中之宝。它不但与我们最为亲密，比其他艺术作品更具世界性，而且更接近生活。它可以翻译成各种文字，为全人类阅读和用来表达感情；它不仅出现在画布上，镌刻在大理石上，而且凝聚在人们的日常生活中。（刘绯译）
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them.Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind. When the illiterate and perhaps scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles of wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those higher but yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only of the imperfection of his culture and the vanity and insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good sense by the pains which he takes to secure for his children that intellectual culture whose want he so keenly feels; and thus it is that he becomes the founder of a family.
书是世界珍贵的财富，为诸国世代相传。最古老和最优秀的书籍自然而恰当地摆在每一间房舍的书架之上；它们并不为自己争辩，当它们启发和激励读者之时，凡具有普通常识的读者绝不会拒绝。它们的作者于每一个社会之中都是自然且不可抗拒的统治者，他们对人类的影响远胜于许多国王和皇帝。即使是那些没有文化、或者说应当遭到鄙视的商人，依靠商业和产业获得了安逸和自主，并跻身于富人和时髦圈子之后，也会不可抗拒地转向更高级、然而也是更难以接近的知识分子和天才们的圈子。此时他们便看到了自己的文化欠缺，意识到财富之空虚与无用。于是他们熬费苦心地让后代获得自己渴望得到的智慧，并以此证明自己仍具有清醒的头脑。由此，他便成为了一个家族的奠基人。（刘绯译）
The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. They have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at most astrologically, not astronomically. Most men have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and not be cheated in trade; but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet this only is reading, in a high sense, not that which lulls us as a luxury and suffers the nobler faculties to sleep the while, but what we have to stand on top-toe to read and devote our most alert and wakeful hours to.
人类迄今尚未阅读这些伟大诗人的作品，这是因为能够读懂它们的唯有伟大的诗人。人们阅读这些作品，就如同老百姓观望星空一般。充其量是看看星象，并不作天文学研究。许多人学习读书不过是为了图个小小的便利，比如他们学习阿拉伯数字，为的是做买卖时算账和不致受骗；但如何将读书作为一种高尚的智慧修炼，他们却所知不多或一无所知。就深刻的意义而言，这种磨练才是读书；书籍绝非诱惑我们的奢侈品，令我们的高级官能变得昏昏欲睡，相反，读书须于头脑最清醒之时正襟危坐，并奉献出自己最宝贵的时间。（刘绯译）
A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of; - and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and class-books, and when we leave school, the “Little Reading,” ans story-books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins.
一个人，甚至任何一个人都会为了得到一块银元而耗费心机，然而却无人用心于古代圣贤的著作，即使其智慧的价值为历代所公认。我们学习的只是一些浅易读本、初级读物和教科书；离开学校后，顶多读些“小册子”和故事书而已，可那是写给孩子们和初读者的，因而我们的阅读、谈话和思维水平很低，无异于智力低下者和侏儒。（刘绯译）
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.
多少人是由于读过一本书而开始了新的生活啊！一本书如果既能阐述我们已取得的业绩，又能展示我们未来新的业绩，那么它便是为我们而存在的。我们目前尚难讲清楚的事情，也许在书中某个地方早已提及了。那些令我们心烦意乱、困惑不解的问题，一切圣贤之人也都曾遇到过，无一例外；这些问题需要每个人依靠各自的能力、用自己的话和生活本身来解答。（刘绯译）
We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment. It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisure - if they are, indeed, so well off - to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives.
我们用于任何一种物质粮食上的钱财都远超过在精神食粮上的开支。现在是我们设立非普通学校的时候了，我们不能等自己长大成人后便脱离学校；现在是各个村镇都建立大学的时候了，老年的村民可以作大学研究员，悠闲自在地 —— 如果他们真是那样富有 —— 将晚年的光阴用来从事自由研究。（刘绯译）
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