I, a sinner, though I do not drink, love drunkards. Those who don't bother with it. If we were to compare their moral state with that of sober, sober people, who aspire to wealth or who are proud, drunkards are superior to them.
[About China.] It is a very interesting novel that I don't know how it will end. I'm on the duke, I stop at the most interesting place. China is bound to follow the European path. But everything he has done so far against European civilization is good, very good.
Everything that has a great effect on me belongs to me, comes from me. But everything that is foreign to me has a weak effect and easily slips past me.
Nothing unites us with other people more than thought.
The kingdom of God is a consequence. It cannot be obtained by external means, by propaganda. Of all prejudices, the most harmful is the belief in the possibility of realizing the kingdom of God by external, command-and-control methods.
Life is not the effort made in the present. True life is outside of time, of space, though we see it in time and space, as past and future.
Raphael, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe do not correspond to my views on art, because art, and I am not ashamed to admit it, is near and dear to me.
Each of us has so many sins, shortcomings, that we do not end them. But we all want to order the good of others. It's a big prejudice.
... The life of revolutionaries is obscurity, austerity and self-denial. In the absence of the religious principle, man easily submits to the dominant current.
Children are like little wild animals. But here arises the possibility of internal struggle. The sooner we start, the better. Violence, prohibitions inspire fear, we must not use them. That's why I say it's hard with children, it's very easy to use violence, to hit them.
People are facing a huge weight that they have to lift. Here, for example, is the table around which we sit. Each of us has the religious conscience, the lever that if we act we will move the table. But we throw down the lever, jump on the table, cling to it with our arms, trying to lift it, and not only do we succeed in nothing, but by our burden we increase its weight. All revolutionaries do this.
When the existing order was maintained by hypnosis it could still be perpetuated, but when it is maintained by violence it is not possible.
I cure myself of pride, I do not value glory. He who is healthy does not value health, he who is rich does not value wealth. Before, I was looking through the newspapers to see what was written about me. Now I turn my back, rather I look away.
You can't even imagine what a benefit it is to lose memory in old age! Mental, religious activity is all the more powerful, energetic, fruitful when the mind is not cluttered with what it once was.
How the unseen thing, the one that is most necessary, stirs everywhere. The mind works, and as thoughts are, so will be deeds.
Writing is anger. Write for money. Writing how to get by when you don't feel like it is like prostitution, you indulge in debauchery when you don't feel like it.
How will a few thousand and tens of thousands organize so many millions of people? Everyone always does it in their own way. The energy must be directed to act on myself, on love, thus I approach the whole world.
It's sad that the party that was fighting the revolutionaries is worse than them. Approves executions, the tsar, church rituals.
Defining the purpose of art as a slavish imitation of nature is an extreme. Like saying art is writing what's on your mind. There are two extremes. Art must express a certain state, a mood, that's art.
Beauty is a meaningless word. There is no beauty in music. What is found in music, in Chopin's, in Hungarian, Tatar, Gypsy, German, Russian folk songs, which every people understands, is the core of true art, that is, the challenge of the state, the feeling that unites all.
Art is not only an imitation of nature, but also a relationship that unites everyone. The idea must be deep.
Beauty, goodness, truth are the ancient human trinity.
Beauty is a false feeling. I don't know what is beautiful. The idea of beauty introduces something false into aesthetics.
Landscapes are not art, and portraits only rarely, when they manage to reflect the spiritual side of the personality.
Life is movement from childhood to death, perpetual movement, whether we like it or not. And if one side (physical) moves and the other (spiritual) stays still, then suffering occurs.
In Russians, drunkenness produces a positive reaction, the drunkard is condemned by everyone.
What courage, to be "useful to the people"! I am 80 years old and I do not know how to be useful to the people. Try not to be a jerk. This is good.
Religious consciousness must evolve. At a certain stage of evolution, religious doctrine lags behind life.
Christ merely spoke the general, inevitable law containing all the conditions proper to all men.
Love is the law above all others, which cannot be broken under any circumstances.