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

by Leo Tolstoy

Better to know a few things which are good and necessary than many things which are useless and mediocre.

Read the best books first, otherwise you’ll find you do not have time.

Those who know the rules of true wisdom are baser than those who love them. Those who love them are baser than those who follow them.

You have to embrace what the wisdom of humanity, your intellect, and your heart tell you: that the meaning of life is to serve the force that sent you into the world. Then life becomes a constant joy.

When you hear about the bad deeds of people, do not listen to the end and try to forget what you have heard. When you hear about the virtues of other people, remember them and tell them to others.

Pride costs more than all that is necessary for food, drink, shelter, or dress.

Read less, study less, but think more. Learn, both from your teachers and from the books which you read, only those things which you really need and which you really want to know.

It is much better to believe that everything which God makes for us is good than to believe in all the pleasures of paradise.

Do not be embarrassed by your mistakes. Nothing can teach us better than our understanding of them. This is one of the best ways of self-education.

It is better to know several basic rules of life than to study many unnecessary sciences. The major rules of life will stop you from evil and show you the good path in life; but the knowledge of many unnecessary sciences may lead you into the temptation of pride, and stop you from understanding the basic rules of life.

Stop robbing others before you give money to beggars. With the same hand that we rob one person, we reward another, giving to the poor the money which we have taken from the even poorer. Better no charity than this kind of charity.

Submission to the law created by men makes one a slave; obedience to the law created by God makes one free.

In order to change the nature of things, either within yourself or in others, one should change, not the events, but those thoughts which created those events.

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.

When two people have a dispute, both are to blame. And therefore, a dispute will stop only when at least one person understands that he or she is guilty.

Stop blaming other people, and you will feel what an alcoholic feels when he stops drinking, or what a smoker feels when he stops smoking. You will feel that you have brought relief to your soul.

The most powerful weapon known is the weapon of blessing. Therefore, a clever person relies on it. He wins with peace, not with war.

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.

Work all the time. Do not think that work is a disaster for you, and do not seek praise or reward for your work.

These technical, scholarly, and artistic achievements can certainly coexist with religious backwardness, as happens in our time.

If you want to serve God, you should work on the side of religious progress in the fight against prejudice, toward a better understanding of the clear and pure religion.

There was a time when people ate each other. They no longer do so, but they still eat animals. The time will come when more and more people will drop this terrible habit. It is a mistake to believe that we need obey no moral in our attitude to the animals, that we have no moral responsibilities to them. This way lies complete vulgarity and rudeness.

The only way to tell the truth is to speak with kindness. Only the words of a loving man can be heard.

Only speak when your words are better than your silence. —ARABIC PROVERB

Many stupid things are uttered by people whose only motivation is to say something original. —VOLTAIRE

Art is one of the means of unifying people. If beautiful art does not express moral ideas, ideas which unite people, then it is not art, but only entertainment. People need to be entertained in order to distance themselves from disappointment in their lives.

Meditations or discussions about art are the most useless pastimes known. Those who really know art know that art can speak well with its own language, and that to speak about art with words is useless. Most people who speak about art do not understand or feel real art.

We should believe that the goodness which exists in us and in this world will be fulfilled. This is the major condition to make it happen.

A person who overeats cannot fight laziness; and a lazy man cannot fight sexual dissipation. All spiritual teachings start with restrictions, with control of the appetite.

Look at your mouth; through it, when you eat to excess, illnesses enter your body. Behave in such a way that when you finish your dinner, you want to eat a little more. Eating to excess is not considered to be a sin by many, because it produces no noticeable harm. But there are sins which destroy human dignity, and eating to excess is one such sin.

you want other people to speak well of you, do not speak well of yourself.

if there is even one person whom you do not love, then you lose God’s love and blessing.

Every physical labor makes a man more noble. If you do not teach your son some physical skills, you teach him to rob

When you appeared in this world, you cried, and all the people around you rejoiced. You have to live your life in such a way that when you leave this world, you will rejoice, and all the people around you will cry.

If all knowledge were good, then pursuit of every sort of knowledge would be useful. But many false meditations are disguised as good and useful knowledge; therefore, be strict in selecting the knowledge you want to acquire.

Christianity in its pure and sincere form works like dynamite: it blows up old mountains and opens up new, limitless horizons.

you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only one way to do so: you have to improve people. And in order to improve people, you begin with only one thing: you can become better yourself.

Live in the open. —AUGUSTE COMTE

And the simpler and stronger our faith becomes, the better we live.

A passion in a person’s heart is like a spider’s web. At the beginning it is an alien visitor; then it becomes a regular guest; then it becomes master of the house.

Too-voracious reading, begun at too early an age, fills our minds with undigested material. Our memory can become the master of our feelings and our fate; and when it does, an intellectual effort is required to reinforce our feelings with primeval innocence, to find ourselves amidst the dusty heaps of foreign thoughts and viewpoints, in order to start feeling by ourselves, and—I am ready to say—in order to live on our own.

Real science shows us how to apply our religious faith to our outer Uves. Art shows us how to apply it to our feelings.

The truth should often overcome thousands of obstacles, until it is accepted.

The scholar who thinks but does not create is like the cloud which does not give rain.

Just as fire blows out candles, good deeds for the benefit of others destroy a selfish life.

The dark spot in the sunlight that falls on us is the shadow created by our own personalities. We live for ourselves only when we live for others. It may seem strange, but try it, and you will see it from your own experience.

If a person does not believe himself capable of doing the best things in the world, then he starts to create the worst things.

If you are living with another person, make an agreement that as soon as either of you starts to blame the other, you will end the argument.

Constant idleness should be included in the tortures of hell, but it is, on the contrary, considered to be one of the joys of paradise.

If you do not know your place in the world and the meaning of your life, you should know that there is something to blame; and it is not the social system, or your intellect, but the way in which you directed your intellect.