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 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.
不论你的生活如何卑贱，你要面对它生活，不要躲避它，更别用恶言咒骂它。它不像你那样坏。你最富有的时候，倒是看似最穷。爱找缺点的人就是到天堂里也能找到缺点。你要爱你的生活，尽管它贫穷。甚至在一个济贫院里，你也还有愉快、高兴、光荣的时候。夕阳反射在济贫院的窗上，像身在富户人家窗上一样光亮；在那门前，积雪同在早春融化。我只看到，一个从容的人，在哪里也像在皇宫中一样，生活得心满意足而富有愉快的思想。城镇中的穷人，我看，倒往往是过着最独立不羁的生活。