A Calendar of Wisdom: New Translation (Alma Classics)

Those who ask where God is to be found are madmen. God is in all nature and in the souls of every one of us. There are many different faiths, but there is one God. Unless a person knows himself, how can he know God? Indian proverb

The protection of the masses has in all times been the pretense of tyranny – the plea of monarchy, of aristocracy, of special privilege of every kind… But, whether under a monarchy or under a republic, is there an instance in the history of the world in which the “protection” of the labouring masses has not meant their oppression? The protection th

Even the most insignificant trifles can assist in the formation of character. You must not say that trifles are meaningless. Only a truly moral person can understand just how significant trifles can be. Tolstoy

If rich people are able to lavish their wealth on the poor, this is because the government, in benefiting a few people, introduces a system of material inequality, thereby giving rise to the necessity for charity. But how can the help which the rich render the poor deserve the name of charity, when people like to flaunt it as if it were something t

In order to truly believe, you have to cultivate faith. And in order to cultivate faith, you need to act accordingly. The essence of acts of faith lies not in great deeds, but in trivial, insignificant acts performed exclusively for God. Pascal said that we all have to “die alone”. And the only true life is the life you live alone, before God rathe

Knowledge of God can come either through the intellect or through a moral awareness that is based on faith. Intellectual knowledge is unreliable and vulnerable to dangerous error. Moral knowledge, on the other hand, ascribes to God only those characteristics which demand that people behave morally. After Kant, RWL

Do what you have to in your life, perfecting and improving your soul, and you can be sure that it is only by doing this that you will be contributing to the general welfare of everybody in the most fruitful way. Tolstoy

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes… but this change is not amelioration… The civilized man has built a coach, but he has lost the use of his feet… He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so

If God treats all people as equal, making no distinction between the good and the bad (and he knows people’s hearts), how can we, not knowing what is going on inside people’s hearts, decide about them from their appearance alone – and on this basis love some but dislike others? Tolstoy