Henry David Thoreau 9

Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable. No day will have been wholly misspent, if one sincere, thoughtful page has been written. Let the daily tide leave some deposit on these pages, as it leaves sand and shells on the shore. So much increase of terra firma. This may be a calendar of the ebbs and flows of the soul; and on these sheets as a beach, the waves may cast up pearls and seaweed. 

—from Henry David Thoreau, Journals (6 July, 1840) 

IMAGE: Edvard Munch, Summer Night by the Beach (1903)