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 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 poorhouse.
The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse
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 oftener 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.
God will see that you do not want society.
If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days,
like a spider,
the world would be just as large to me
while I had my thoughts about me.