前言：阅读是当今媒体社会最普通的活动，看看梭罗是如何看待阅读的。
从某个角度讲 - 人类可能从来没有真正读懂过 - 伟大诗人的作品 - 因为只有伟大的诗人才能完全读出其中的生命和精神。我们阅读这些伟大诗人作品的水平 - 就像大众仰望夜幕星辰，最多从星象学的角度，而不是从天文学角度去观察星星。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.
大多数人学会阅读 - 仅仅为了生活的基本需求和方便，正如他们学会数字 - 只是为了记账、免得做生意时受骗；Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and not be cheated in trade;
但是，阅读为什么是人类最高贵的心智磨练？- 多数人知之甚少、或者说一无所知；but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing;
那么，从人类文明的高处看，什么才是真正的阅读？绝不是像奢侈品那样吸引我们的阅读，也不是让我们大脑昏昏欲睡的阅读。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,
真正的阅读 - 我们需要踮起脚尖、屏气凝神，而且奉献我们最警觉、最清醒的时光。
but what we have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our most alert and wakeful hours to.
我坚信 - 认识字母以后，就该阅读最好的文学作品，而不是永远重复字母表和简单的词语，像四五年级的小学生 - 终身坐在最低年级、最前排的座位上。I think that having learned our letters we should read the best that is in literature, and not be forever repeating our a-b-abs, and words of one syllable, in the fourth or fifth classes, sitting on the lowest and foremost form all our lives.
大多数人 - 只要能够阅读或听别人阅读 - 就满足了，最多偶尔再听听圣经的智慧 - 浅尝则止。然后，在所谓轻松阅读中浪费才能，无所事事地度过余生。Most men are satisfied if they read or hear read, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy reading.
附近公共图书馆里 - 有一部多卷本的作品，名叫“小读物” - 我居然还以为这是我没有去过的一个小镇的名字。There is a work in several volumes in our Circulating Library entitled "Little Reading," which I thought referred to a town of that name which I had not been to.
有人 - 就像鸬鹚和鸵鸟 - 看到任何读物都照单全收 - 即使暴食之后，照样消化得了，因为他们无法容忍浪费。There are those who, like cormorants and ostriches, can digest all sorts of this, even after the fullest dinner of meats and vegetables, for they suffer nothing to be wasted.
如果说有人是供应饲料的机器，那么，有人就是阅读这种饲料的机器。 If others are the machines to provide this provender, they are the machines to read it.
后记：阅读为精神提供食粮 - 立志宜思真品格，读书须尽苦功夫。
