Sublime

Tolstoy expressed his exasperation at people who didn’t read deeply and regularly. “I cannot understand,” he said, “how some people can live without communicating with the wisest people who ever lived on earth.”

to understand one and the same thing with certainty and to compose that life of the soul which alone makes life worth living and alone is what we value.

There are two different states of human existence: first, to live without thinking of death; second, to live with the thought that you approach death with every hour of your life.

il voyait que tous ceux de son entourage le considéraient comme un désagrément accidentel, comme une inconvenance (tel un homme qui, en entrant dans un salon, exhalerait autour de lui une mauvaise odeur). Toujours les apparences qui avaient été le culte de toute sa vie. Il voyait que personne ne le regrettait, que personne ne voulait même comprendr

There are people who take responsibility for making decisions for others and determining their relationship to God and to the world; and there are people, the overwhelming majority of them, who give this authority to the others, and blindly believe in everything they are told. Both groups of people commit an equal crime.

Try always to eliminate in yourself any wish to dominate others, do not seek glory or praise – this can all lead to the ruin of your soul. Do not allow yourself to think that you possess particular virtues that are lacking in others. From Pious Thoughts

'No,' said the imp, 'that was not the way I did it. All I did was to see that the peasant had more corn than he needed. The blood of the beasts is always in man; but as long as he has only enough corn for his needs, it is kept in bounds.

You can only improve life in yourself by destroying the barriers that divide your life from that of others, and by considering others as yourself, and loving them. By so doing you increase your share of life.