Love your life,poor as it is.

http://www.hnst.org/EnglishCorner/jzsx/9.htm However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun1 it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The faultfinder2 will find faults even in paradise3. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling4, glorious5 hours, even in a poor-house.

The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the al-mshouse6 as brightly as from the rich man’s abode7; 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 disreputable8. Cultivate9 poverty like a garden herb10, 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.