Passage 10
Love Your Life
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it or 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 poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the window 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. Maybe they are simply great enough to receive without misgivings. 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 to the old, turn to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

Passage 11
Man Is Here for the Sake of Other Men
Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, and yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose.
From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know that man is here for the sake of other men — above all for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received. My peace of mind is often troubled by the depressing sense that I have borrowed too heavily from the work of other men.
To ponder interminably over the reason for one’s own existence or the meaning of life in general seems to me, from an objective point of view, to be sheer folly. And yet everyone holds certain ideals by which he guides his aspiration and his judgment. The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort and happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.

Passage 12
The Ways to Duck out of Work
Want to watch the World Cup in peace without the boss over your shoulder? Simple, con him. A British Internet site offered fans an ingenious range of ways to duck out of work so they can watch games in comfort. The timings of the games, in the early morning or at midday, have posed a dilemma to millions of soccer-mad Britons used to watching games in the evenings or at weekends and desperate to follow England and Ireland’s World Cup progress live. The British government has already urged employers to bow to the inevitable and take a flexible attitude to working hours or set up TV screens. “The last thing we want is the entire workforce taking an announced sickie on the day of a big match,” Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt said. But British sports company Umbro was urging fans to take the matter into their own hands. Its Web site www. umbro.com was offering a convincing-looking false sick note signed by a fictitious doctor, F. Albright, to be printed off and taken to work in advance. Alternatively, its “Top Ten Bunk Off Ideas” included such improbable excuses as: “I will be late for work today because I have to pick my uncle up from the train station. He has two bags but only one arm.” For another game, a fan might claim: “My dog ate my car keys. We’re going to hitchhike to the vet.”