The practice of Mohammedanism did not require a radical transformation of life, as did the practice of Christianity.
No disease causes me more pity than mental alienation, because with the mentally alienated, unlike all other sick and dying people, no communication of any kind is possible.
The intelligentsia is nothing but a new social blanket that will take the place of the capitalists, the officials.
It seems to me that obedience to the government is like obedience to a band of robbers. The government is an immoral assembly. The case of Azef * is telling for the immorality of the government.
It's amazing how people can live without regard for death!
I think metaphysics is necessary. A philosopher said that the truth is revealed to people on the one hand through metaphysics, on the other through religion. Both just need to be simple and clear.
The light is already in every man. It is in both the bad and the good man, we just have to distinguish it. Passions prevent it from manifesting itself. The light exists in every man, he only has to gather his strength and remove what hides it.
... People strive to get, they want exactly what they do not need: wealth, erudition.
In the good spiritual realm there is only one good thing: that which is spiritual. Beauty and poetry are not to be confused here.
Victor Hugo is a force, Herzen as well. They have a certain spiritual energy, certain precious demands. Dickens, Dostoevsky Schiller have them too. Dostoevsky is confused, he is not free, he keeps close to the old and to what is "Russian, exceptional". He is chained by the religion of the people.
Why is the gospel dearer to us than anything else? Because it is a work of art: it contains parables, it speaks of God's consciousness. How can I like a description of someone walking through the woods and kissing a girl's hand? It's a trifle. The weakness of the upper classes is that they attach importance to these things to justify the life they lead. Man cannot live without art, just as he cannot live without food. But just as it is not good to attach great importance to food and to eat as sweet as possible, so it is with poetry and beauty. The less food there is, the cleaner and better it is, as in the case of art.
Art is given exceptional importance. It is considered something superior. I know what food is, but I don't know what gastronomy is. Nowadays, "higher" art has come to self-destruct. The same decay is seen in science. I recently read Weininger. The decay of art and science began long ago. Now they began to make great demands on life, and dealing with poetry became an inconvenient thing. They used to flog [the peasants] and take care of poetry. This refined art is doomed to perish. It appeared in the classes that lived in the most reprehensible way, in the social blanket that led a repulsive life. But because something superior to it began to appear in this world, it (art) perishes.
These phenomena, what we call true art (songs, fairy tales, fables), are all good. Novels appeared because the rich had nothing to do. Some wrote, others read this nonsense and thought (myself included) that they were dealing with something of great importance. I don't see how these ideas of mine could seem unclear to anyone. Here in Russia, a hundred million people do not have access to this art.
[On sex.] I'm not saying that I lived well. I lived miserably. I say that abstinence is possible and necessary.
God, why do Romanian people write? We are all under the spell of aesthetics. Hegel's philosophy has impressed us so much that sometimes we unconsciously Hegelianize. Not all ethics are ethics. We must not cram everything into this concept, but only Christian ethics.
The people are better than the intelligentsia because they believe in something. Intellectuals who do not go to church and do not believe are more to be feared, they instill external rituals in the people.
The older I get, the clearer it is to me that the state is an obsolete form. If I live, I will write about it. In fact, there is a Law of God and human relationships are based on it, but people have the most stupid principle as their foundation stone.
Muhammad always quotes the Gospel. He does not recognize Christ as God and does not give himself as God. Mohammedans have no god but God, and Mohammed is his prophet. There are no dogmas, no secrets. Which religion is better: Orthodoxy or Mohammedanism? It is clear to me that Mohammedanism is better. Mohammedanism helped me a lot.
... As man evolves, so does the religious foundation, which is the same in the Vedas, Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity, Mohammedanism. The basis evolves over time towards simplification and unification.
Only love, religious love brings freedom. But love is love only when its indispensable condition is the non-use of violence.
Pornography is one aspect of the media, another aspect is the incitement to crime and evil.
It is a grave crime for parents to instill in their children things that they themselves do not really believe. The great Kant said that we must educate children not for the existing order of life, but for the one that will come, that will be.
Material progress is represented by roads and electric wires, spiritual progress leads from prophets and icons to the Christian doctrine of good. The religious consciousness of mankind must progress in its turn. And if you don't follow it, if you don't follow religious progress, you will remain a savage. Progress is visible in everything, not only in the spiritual field. Religion sets mankind in motion, and if it sets mankind in motion, then religion is in motion.
It is the spiritual life that some blame you for, and you continue to behave the same way. Such people will be more and more with time, but now they do not exist. We are inclined to deceive ourselves. We do everything for worldly glory, to gain the recognition of those whose opinion counts in our eyes, and we take all this as spiritual life.
We Slavs have a strong patriotic feeling. We must fight against him. We enslave ourselves. If we do not enslave ourselves, no one can enslave us. There is a natural attraction to your people, mine to the Russian, although I strive not to be a Russian, but a Christian. Patriotism is harmful.
Suicides are committed by the duplicated people. It is a kind of intermediate state, he who lives to his heart's desire, lives as long as he keeps the hope of living well. But those who live a spiritual life know that they cannot kill themselves.
The orthodoxy of Solovyov *, of Bulgakov ** is false, artificial and insincere. As long as people believed in the state, things were going well, but now, when everyone is disappointed and aggravated, the state has lost its meaning. As well as the idea of justice in our country, this idea was born and died before my eyes.
Everything I wrote about women is nonsense. If I had said everything I know about women...
If I were to switch to all the beliefs to which I am persistently invited to switch (Bishop Hermogenes *, Orthodox, Theosophists, Baptists and others) it would turn out to be a real talmes-balmes!
It is not about perfection in the matter of morality. Perfection is inaccessible to mankind. Morality is about approaching the ideal. And the argument that perfection is unattainable is made by those who encourage murder, because they justify crime by the impossibility of attaining the ideal.