Things do not change; we change.

The line comes in the “Conclusion” of Walden, in a passage that preaches contentment with a modest life. “Love your life, poor as it is,” Thoreau writes: the setting sun shines on the windows of the almshouse as brightly as on the rich man’s house. He advises cultivating poverty “like a garden herb, like sage”, and not troubling oneself to get new things, “whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them.” Then comes the line, followed by “Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.” Even confined all his days to a corner of a garret, like a spider, he says, the world would be just as large to him while he had his thoughts.

Thoreau had tested this life for two years in a cabin he built by Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts; Walden appeared in 1854.

“Turn the old” probably alludes to the thrifty habit of turning a worn coat, resewing it inside out so that it looks new. The world works the same way: what renews it is our way of seeing.

Walden, Conclusion, 1854

Checked word for word in the work itself.

Read the passage in the work