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

by Leo Tolstoy

“I have to create a circle of reading for myself: Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal, The New Testament.

Socrates, Epictetus, Arnold, Parker….

I have selected thoughts and grouped them into the following major topics: God, Intellect, Law, Love, Divine Nature of Mankind, Faith, Temptations, Word, Self-Sacrifice, Eternity, Good, Kindness, Unification of People (with God), Prayer, Freedom, Perfection, Work,

Plato, Buddha, Dostoevski, Pascal, Leskov, Chekhov, and others.

Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn, were written in a clear, simple, almost primitive language, designed, as they were, for a wide and general audience.

There are too many mediocre books which exist just to entertain your mind. Therefore, read only those books which are accepted without doubt as good.

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

The difference between real material poison and intellectual poison is that most material poison is disgusting to the taste, but intellectual poison, which takes the form of cheap newspapers or ...

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.