A Calendar of Wisdom

Perfection is of God. To wish for perfection is of man.
Life is not given to us that we might live idly without work. No, our life is a struggle and a journey. Good should struggle with evil; truth should struggle with falsehood; freedom should struggle with slavery; love should struggle with hatred. Life is movement, a walk along the way of life to the fulfillment of those ideas which illuminate us, both in our intellect and in our hearts, with divine light.
After Giuseppe Mazzini
The ideal is within you, and the obstacle to reaching this ideal is also within you. You already possess all the material from which to create your ideal self.
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.
The fear of death in man is the understanding of his sins.
The more spiritual a life a person leads, the less he is afraid of death. For a spiritual person death means setting the spirit free from the body. Such a person knows that the things with which he lives cannot be destroyed.
Only those who do not live are not afraid of death.
If as Socrates said, death is the state in which we abide during our sleep made permanent, we all know this state, and know there is nothing terrible in it. And if death is a transfer to a better life, as many people think, then death is not evil but a blessing.
We should get ready for death, because it will come, sooner or later. The best thing to do is to live a good life. If you live a good life, you should not be afraid of death.
The more closely a person unites with the will of God, the firmer this person becomes in his actions.
When a traveler starts on a trip along a road which is under the threat of robbers, he does not go alone. He waits for a friend, someone to be his escort, and then he follows him and so is protected from robbers. A wise man lives his life the same way. But there are so many troubles in this world. How can we stand all of them? What kind of a friend or escort will we find on our way, so that we may pass through our lives without fear? Where should we turn? There is only one answer, only one real friend. That is God. If you follow God everywhere, you will steer clear of trouble. To follow God is to want what He wants, and not to want what He does not want. How to achieve this? You have to understand and follow His laws.
After Epictetus
Do not wish for too much, nor think that the things you wish for are the only right or necessary things. You should wish only for those things for which God wishes.
The right path in life is very narrow, but it is important to find it. You can understand it, as well as we can understand it, as a walkway of wood built across a swamp; if you step off it, you will plunge into the swamp of misunderstanding and evil. A wise man returns to the true path at once, but a weak man plunges further and further into the swamp, and it becomes more and more difficult for him to get out.
What reward should a good deed bring you? Only the joy you receive by performing it. And any other reward lessens the feeling of this joy.
He who does good to others makes the biggest gift to himself.
A saint prayed to God in the following way: “O God, please be kind to evil people as much as you are to kind people. Kind people already feel good, because they are kind.”
If you do good and ask for a reward, you weaken the force of your goodness.
What a joy it is to do a good deed! And this joy is strongest if no one knows that you have done it.
Eating to excess is a vice just as bad as many others. We often do not notice it in others, because most of us are subject to it.
There are sins against others, and sins against yourself. You commit sins against others when you do not respect God’s spirit in them; you commit sins against yourself when you do not respect God’s spirit in yourself. One of the most common sins against yourself is gluttony. 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.
God gave food to people, and the devil gave cooks.
Socrates, a wise man, tried to abstain from all unnecessary things. He said that food should serve you in fighting your hunger, and not in developing sophisticated tastes, and he asked his students to follow his rule. He reminded his students about the wise Odysseus, whom Circe, an evil sorceress, could not subject to her magic, because he did not eat to excess. But the members of his crew, his friends, were turned into a herd of pigs by her as soon as they rushed to the abundance of sweet food.
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.
Just as it’s folly to try to lift yourself into the air, you should not praise yourself too much. When you praise yourself, you produce the opposite effect in others, and appear lower in their eyes.
If you want other people to speak well of you, do not speak well of yourself.
A man who praises himself does not see anything except himself around him. It is better to be a blind man than to see only yourself and nobody else.
He who always listens to what other people say about him will never find inner peace.
A flatterer speaks his flattery because he has a low opinion of himself and of others.
If you want to preserve your good name, do not praise yourself and do not so much as allow others to praise you.
Love of God is love in itself; it is love for the sake of love. This kind of love is the highest blessing. It does not allow the slightest possibility of treating even a single creature without love; if there is even one person whom you do not love, then you lose God’s love and blessing.