Some people insist that only today and tomorrow matter. But how much poorer we would be if we really lived by that rule! So much of what we do today is frivolous and futile and soon forgotten. So much of what we hope to do tomorrow never happens.
The past is the bank in which we store our most valuable possession—the memories that give meaning and depth to our lives.
Those who truly treasure the past will not bemoan the passing of the good old days, because days enshrined in memory are never lost. Death itself is powerless to still a remembered voice or erase a remembered smile. And for one boy who is now a man, there is a pond which neither time nor tide can change, where he can still spend a quiet hour in the sun.
“虽然我不富甲天下，却拥有无数个艳阳天和夏日。”
——亨利·大卫·梭罗
写这句话时，梭罗想起孩提时代的瓦尔登湖。
当时伐木者和火车尚未严重破坏湖畔的美丽景致。小男孩可以走向湖中，仰卧小舟，自一岸缓缓漂向另一岸，周遭有鸟儿戏水，燕子·飞。梭罗喜欢回忆这样的艳阳天和夏日，“这时，慵懒是最迷人也是最具生产力的事情！”
我也曾是热爱湖塘的小男孩，拥有无数艳阳天与夏日。如今阳光、夏日依旧，男孩和湖塘却已改变。那男孩已长大成人，不再有那么多时间泛舟湖上，而湖塘也为大城市所并。曾有苍鹭觅食的沼泽，如今已枯竭殆尽，上面盖满了房舍。睡莲静静漂浮的湖湾，现在成了汽艇的避风港。总之，男孩所爱的一切都已不复存在——只留在人们的回忆中。
有些人坚持认为只有今日和明日才是重要的，可是如果真的照此生活，我们将是何其可怜！许多今日我们做的事是徒劳不足取的，很快就会被忘记。许多我们期待明天将要做的事情却从来没有发生过。
过去是一所银行，我们将最可贵的财产——记忆珍藏其中。记忆赐予我们生命的意义和深度。
真正珍惜过去的人，不会悲叹旧日美好时光的逝去，因为藏于记忆中的时光永不流失。死亡本身无法止住一个记忆中的声音，或擦除一个记忆中的微笑。对现已长大成人的那个男孩来说，那儿将有一个池塘不会因时间和潮汐而改变，可以让他继续在阳光下享受安静时光。
热爱生活
Love Your Life
亨利·大卫·梭罗 / Henry David Thoreau
亨利·大卫·梭罗（1817—1862），散文家、超验主义哲学家。出生于美国以超验主义中心著称的康科德，并在那儿度过了大半生。梭罗毕生以超验主义作为自己的生活则，并将之发挥到极致；他一生未娶，曾隐居瓦尔登湖两年有余，过着与世隔绝的生活，并在湖边的木屋里写下了著名的《瓦尔登湖》一书。本文即选自此书。
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 poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house 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 often 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.
不管你的生活有多卑微，面对它吧，把生活进行下去，不可逃脱，也不能报以恶言，生活还不及你坏哩。你最富的时候，它反而最贫瘠。人若爱找茬儿，天堂也能被他挑出毛病。哪怕贫穷，你也要热爱生活。快活、激动和光荣的时光甚至在济贫院里也享受的到。反射在那里窗上的落日光芒，和照在有钱人家窗上的阳光是一样的亮堂，门前的积雪也同样都是在早春融化。在我的眼里，一个心态平和的人，他思想乐观，处世泰然，居住在济贫院里就像居住在皇宫里一样。在我看来，镇上的穷人们往往过着最独立自在的生活。他们一定足够伟大，不然岂能欣然接受。大多数人以为自己不依靠城镇养活，认为自己超凡脱俗，但情况往往是，他们利用不正当的手段作为谋生之计，这些让他们更加名声狼藉。像圣人那样，对待贫穷就像对待园子里的草木，耕耘它吧！不要自找麻烦地去寻求新事物、新朋友或者是新衣服。去找旧的，回归旧有之物。万物并没有改变，变的是我们。衣帽可以卖掉，但思想应该保留。
爱是艰难的
Love Is Difficult
勒内·马利亚·里尔克 / Rainer Maria Rilke
勒内·马利亚·里尔克（1875—1926），奥地利诗人。大学攻读哲学、艺术与文学史。里尔克的诗歌尽管充满孤独痛苦情绪和悲观虚无思想，但艺术造诣很高。本篇节选自他的书信集《给一位青年诗人的十封信》。
It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginner sin everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time ahead and far on into life, is solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent). it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances. Only in this sense, as the task of working on themselves ( "to hearken and to hammer day and night"), may young people use the love that is given to them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, for a long, long time, save and gather themselves); it is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough.
爱，很好。因为爱是艰难的。当一个人去爱另一个人，这也许是神给予我们的最艰难、最重大的任务，是最后的考验与测试，是最崇高的工作，别的工作都不过是为此而做的准备。所以那些一切都还刚刚开始的青年们还不能去爱，他们必须要学习。必须用他们整个的生命，用一切的力量，用集聚了他们寂寞、痛苦和荣誉感的心去学习爱。在学习时期这个长久而专注的过程中，爱就会永远地铭刻心扉——深深的寂寞中孤独地等待，是为了所爱的人。爱的要义并不是什么倾心、献身，或二人的结合（那会是怎样的一种结合呢？是一种糊涂的、不负责任的、轻率的结合）。它对于个人是一种崇高的动力，是去成熟并实现自身的圆满，去完成一个世界，是为了另一个人而完成一个自己的世界，这是一个艰巨的、不可妥的目标，用坚定的信念，向远方召唤。青年们应把爱当做他们的课业、他们工作的意义，并在其中（“昼夜不停地探索、锤炼”）使用那些给予他们的爱。至于倾心、献身以及结合，还不是他们所能做的（他们还需长时间地克制、积累），那是最后的终点，也许是我们现在还几乎不能达到的境界。
On Love
卡里·纪伯伦 / Kahlil Gibran