Quit looking at me. It's going to be okay. Quit looking at me.

merrily, merrily, merrily...

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty [he agreed] . . . I do not speak to those who are well employed;, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not; - but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them . . . I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it. or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters . . .

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names . . . 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 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 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 . .

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

- Thoreau