用心才聽得出來的語言

It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard. Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. 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.

從觀照自身得知，愈來愈少的人能夠認真看待文字；縱使已開發國家的教育程度提升，文字對社會整體的影響力也愈來愈小。

我相信像林義雄先生這樣信仰梭羅的思想的人是一個真正誠實的人。但是因為以類似面貌出現在人們眼前的人太多，漸漸人們也就不以為意了。所以當李敖說這個人不可相信，也就有人半信半疑。心中充滿權術的人認為道德有時只會壞事，也就更不會把林先生所代表的當一回事。

文字所面臨的困境也是如此。大部份的人看書是為了獲得「有用」的知識；只管這種知識是不是能賺錢，是不是能提升自己的情緒管理，是不是能洗滌自己的心靈，而沒有人在意文字背後的生命和靈魂。

什麼樣的時代會有什麼樣的產物。現代的作品說話的對象不再是人類的智慧與心靈，不再是一切時代能夠了解它們的人。它們的目的只是希望像演說者那樣，讓聽眾對他們的滔滔言詞發出掌聲。梭羅說的好，經過淬煉的語言太具有含意，不是耳朵可以聽得出來的。而只有已經重生的人才能學會「說」這種語言。