Love Your Life
By Henry David Thoreau
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 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 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.
Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.