Love your life

　　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 fau lt-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-h ouse(救济院) as brightly as from the rich man's abode(住所) ; 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. T he town's poor seem to me often to live the most indepe ndent 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 oftener happe ns that they are not above supporting themselves by dis honest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultiv ate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not troub le yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old, return to them. Things do not ch ange; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your though ts.

　　by Henry David Thoreau