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 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. May be 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.