Chapter 116 Conclusion - 5

However mean your life is, face it and live it; don't hide from it, let alone curse it.It's not as bad as yours.When you are the richest, you are the poorest.Those who love to find faults will find faults even in heaven.Love your life despite poverty.You may have some pleasant, delightful, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse.The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode before which the snow melts as early in spring.I do not see but a mind at ease may live as contentedly there, and have cheering thoughts, as in a royal palace.The town's poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives.Perhaps because they are great, they deserve it.Most people think that they are detached from the support of the town; but in fact they often deal with life by dishonest means, which are far from being detached, rather dishonorable.See poverty as a garden flower and cultivate it like a saint!Don't bother yourself with new tricks, whether it's new friends or new clothes.Find the old one; go back there.Nothing changes; we change.Sell ​​your clothes but keep your thoughts.God will guarantee that you don't need society.If I have to hide in a corner of a garret all day like a spider, the world is just as big to me as long as I can think.The philosopher said, "The army can win the commander, but the man can't lose the ambition." Don't be anxious to develop, don't give in to the influence that plays with you; these are all waste.Lowness is like darkness, shining with a most beautiful light.The shadow of poverty and meanness looms over us, "But behold! our horizons are widened." We are often reminded that even if we were given the riches of Clothos, our end must be the same, and our means will be Still the same.Besides, if you are limited by poverty, such as books and newspapers, then you are only limited to the most meaningful and important experiences: you have to be with those who can produce the most. The sugars deal with the most starchy substances.Life is sweetest near the bones.You won't do boring things anymore.The magnanimity of those above will not cause any loss to those below.Superfluous wealth can only buy superfluous things, and things that are necessary for the human soul do not need money to buy.

I live in a corner of a leaden wall, where a bit of bell-bronze alloy has been poured.Often, during my midday break, a chaotic tinkling sound came to my eardrums from outside.This is the voice of my contemporaries.My neighbors are telling me of their adventures with famous gents and ladies, of the nobles they met at dinner tables; I am no more interested in these than I am in the contents of the Daily Times.The general taste and conversation stuff is always about dress and manners, but a goose is a goose, dress it up as you like.They told me that California and Texas, England and India, Georgia or Massachusetts, and so-and-so were fleeting, ephemeral phenomena, and I almost fled from their courtyards like a Mamluk governor.I would like to go my own way, not to paint, to show off, to attract attention, even if I could walk hand in hand with the master architect of this universe, I would not—I would not live in this restless, nervous, hectic world.In the trivial life of the nineteenth century, I would rather stand or sit, meditate, and let the nineteenth century pass.What are people celebrating?They are all on the organizing committee of some cause, and they are always ready to hear speeches.God is only the chairman today, and Webster is his orator.I love to weigh, to handle, to move toward those things that strongly and rationally attract me;—never pull the bar of the scale to reduce the weight,—not assuming a situation, but according to this Acting as it really was; traveling the only way I could travel, where no force could stop me.I will not be complacent by building an arch before laying a solid foundation.Let's not play risky games.Everything has to have a solid foundation.We read of a traveler who asked a child whether the swamp before him had a firm bottom.The child said yes.But at once the traveler's horse sank, into its girth, and he said to the boy, "I have heard you say that this swamp has a firm bottom." "Yes," replied the latter, "" But you're not halfway there yet." The same goes for the mire and quicksand of society.To know this, it must be an old child.Only when it is rare and coincidental, what is thought and said is good.I don't want to be a man who drives a nail into a wall with only lath and mortar, and if I do, I won't be able to sleep in the middle of the night.Give me a hammer and let me feel for the batten.Do not rely on mortar applied to the surface.Hammering in a nail and making it really fasten, I would be satisfied when I wake up in the middle of the night and think about it——this kind of work, even if you summoned the goddess of literature and art to take a look, you have nothing to be ashamed of .God will help you if you do this, and He will only help you if you do this.Every nail hammered should be part of the cosmic machine.You are continuing this work.

Don't give me love, don't give me money, don't give me fame, give me truth.I sat at a table rich with delicacies, and was entertained with flattery, but there was no truth or sincerity; and I came home from this indifferent table after the meal hungry.This treat is as cold as ice.I don't want to freeze them with ice anymore, they tell me the age and name of the wine; but I think of an older, but newer, purer, more glorious drink, but they don't have it, can't buy it .Style, architecture, grounds and "entertainment" are, in my opinion, equal to nothing.I went to visit a king, and he bade me wait for him in his drawing room, like a hospitable man.One of my neighbors lives in a tree hole.His behavior is truly regal.It would have been much better if I had visited him.