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by
Leo Tolstoy
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January 24 - January 25, 2021
with each other, but this is impossible without self-denial. — MARCUS AURELIUS
you cannot accomplish anything material without effort.
You can achieve nothing for your spirit without effort.
Every time you compare your actions to others’, you allow temptation to place an obstacle on the path to self-improvement.
You can do this only when you are by yourself. In these moments of solitude, you must question every thought and teaching you are unsure of.
you are afraid to face the truth for your own good, you will never improve your situation but make it worse.
If you are unsure, abstain from both speech and action. This is a very important rule to follow.
Small, good deeds help build your character, so there are no small things in this life. All life is built from small, unimportant events and insignificant things.
The most difficult, and also the most important, effort is to abstain from talking.
Do not judge others. If someone judges you and says bad things about you, do not judge that person in return.
respect all kinds of words — your own, and others’ judgments, written, printed, and spoken.
Beware of the words that separate, and use those that unite.
Most of the evil deeds committed by people are committed not because people are evil but because they believe in evil ideas expressed by others. We must never take others’ ideas for granted.
If we believe and remember that our strength is in our thoughts,
A feeling appears independently of a person’s will. But a thought can either accept or reject that feeling. Therefore, our thoughts are the essence of all things.
A person can escape the unhappiness that befalls him but not the unhappiness he creates himself.
if you are judged, respond with kindness. If you are humiliated, be humble; if you are
All truly great things happen through suffering.
bad mood is bad not just for you but because i...
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When you wake, ask yourself the question, “What good can I do today?”
There is only a tiny instant of time in the present, where all our life is concentrated.
However, our true life is outside of time.
A wise person transfers his life from his physical to his spiritual self. This does
Truth is always within your reach. It follows you as a shadow follows a person walking in sunlight.
You should make the effort to live according to God’s law; then your life will be good.
Do not search for pleasures; rather, be prepared to find pleasure in all that you do.
God does not ask you for anything other than to love God and your neighbor, and love is not difficult but joyful.
On the contrary, true faith comes into your heart out of silence and solitude.
When you talk to someone, look carefully into his or her eyes. You will sense that we are all very close to one another, as if we were family,
We are separated from each other by our bodies, but we are united by our spirit.
We can feel energy waves from a distance in the spiritual world, just as we see the light of a distant star.
When we love others, and when we are loved, we feel good.
If you have to be right, then you cannot confront your sins.
When others reveal your mistakes and sins to you, the worst possible response is anger,
When you pursue bodily pleasures and live only to pamper them, then inevitably you lose the ability to feel pleasure.
In the same way, when we become used to luxuries and the trappings of wealth, we begin to forget simple living and lose our inner joy and peace and freedom.
However, the wise men of the past have always affirmed that needing less is better.
When people live by the spirit, they don’t need riches at all.
The law of material life is work. The law of spiritual life is love.
The more you think of yourself as superior, the more anger you feel. A humble person is a kind person.
the wrong way, rather than improve his life he will try to find justifications for it — for example, that he is better than others. From this it appears that a person living a bad life must be filled with self-pride.
We all are given a great gift, the gift of our very life, with all its joys and pleasures. Yet we often say that we are not happy.
Nothing results in bad deeds and actions more than belonging to a group of people, a club or society, who think they are better than others.
Therefore, pay no attention to blame or praise.
Heaven is angry at us for our sins, and the world is angry at us for our virtues.
As soon as you come down from the heights where you live for your spirit, you immediately dive into the world of peopl...
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Be more concerned with the quality of...
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This is because you served not for God’s sake, but for fame and vanity.
True kindness in not only a virtue but also a weapon, a weapon more powerful than violence.
What is prayer? It is appealing to the higher state of your spirit and trying to remind yourself that you are a spiritual being.