A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Se

The higher the opinion a person has of himself, the more unstable is his position; the lower he moves in his selfesteem, the firmer he stands. To be strong, you have to be like water: if there are no obstacles, it flows; if there is an obstacle it stops; if a dam is broken, then it flows further; if a vessel is square, then it has a square form; if

Every day, from 1905 to 1910, he read thoughts presented in the book for the corresponding day of the year, and he recommended the same habit to all his friends. On May 16, 1908, he wrote to a man named Gusev: “I cannot understand how some people can live without communicating with the wisest people who ever lived on Earth? … I feel very happy ever

False faith is the major cause of most of our misfortunes.

Society can be improved only by self-sacrifice. Heaven and earth are eternal. They are eternal because they do not exist for themselves. In the same way, a truly holy person does not live for himself, and therefore he can become eternal, and can achieve anything. —LAO-TZU

The fulfillment of our duties and the satisfaction of our personal pleasures are two different things. Duties have their own laws, and even if we try to mix our duties with our pleasures, they will separate themselves. —After IMMANUEL KANT

The history of mankind is the movement of humanity toward greater and greater unification.

It’s important to strive to do good, and even more important to strive to abstain from evil.

All events, whether in the lives of human individuals, or human societies, have their beginnings in thought. Therefore, to fully understand other people and other societies, we must look beyond previous events to the thoughts which gave rise to them. Perhaps it is even more important to know what one should not think about than what one should thin

Remember how passionately you yearned in the past for many of the things which you hate or despise now. Remember how many things you lost trying to satisfy your former desires. The same thing could happen now, with the desires which excite you at present. Try to tame your present desires, calm them; this is most beneficial, and most achievable.

It would be nice if wisdom had such a quality that it could flow from one man who is full of wisdom to another man who has no wisdom, just as with two connected vessels water flows from one vessel to the other until the water level is the same in both of them. The problem is that to obtain wisdom, you must make an independent, serious effort of you