A Calendar of Wisdom

Being poor is better than living in luxury and serving the rich. Do not stand at the door of a rich man asking for favors if you hope to lead a good life.

A dress presented to you as a gift by the king may be beautiful, but your own simple dress is better. Different meals from the tables of the rich may be good, but a loaf of simple bread from your own table always tastes much better.

To those people who do not work the land, the soil says: if you do not work me, by applying physical labor with both of your hands, then you will stand in front of the doors of others asking for help; you will always be fated to use the leftovers of the rich.

You will find that people unwilling to work will either take advantage of others or be humiliated by them.

People involve themselves in countless activities which they consider to be important, but they forget about one activity which is more important and necessary than any other, and which includes all other things: the improvement of their soul.

The biggest happiness is when at the end of the year you feel better than at the beginning.

“Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.” This means that you should try to find the presence of the Holy Spirit in your soul.

To improve ourselves, to move toward that goal, perfection, that puts no less a demand on us for being unattainable, requires solitude, removal from the concerns of everyday life. And yet constant solitude renders self-improvement impossible, if not pointless. A balance must be struck between meditating in solitude and then applying this to your everyday life.

To repay evil with goodness is easier, wiser, and more natural than to repay evil with evil.

Repay evil with goodness.

Conquer rage with humility, conquer evil with goodness, conquer greed with generosity, and conquer lies with truth.

When we treat our neighbors as they deserve to be treated, we make them even worse; when we treat them as if they were who we wish they were, we improve them.

Those who take joy in repaying an evil with goodness will always try to experience this joy again.

People think that if they call mass murder “war,” then mass murder will stop being a murder, a crime. One can deny Christ in various ways: one can blaspheme rudely, or mock his greatness. But such ways are not dangerous; religion is too precious for people, and this mockery cannot cleave them from it. But there is another way to deny Christ: this is when you call Him your master, and you claim to follow His commandments, but you suppress any free thought by quoting his words, and disguise all stupidities, all mistakes, and all sins of the people in his name. This second way is the truly dangerous one.

It is not true that a war against a foreign nation can be sacred. It is not true that the earth wants blood. The earth wants pure water from the sky for its rivers, pure dew from its clouds, but not blood. War is cursed by God, as are those who participate in it.

Murder is always a crime, no matter whom, and how it is justified.

Love of goodness and faith in immortality are inseparable. Nobody can say that he knows what the afterlife will be. Our beliefs are based not on logical proofs but on moral ones and therefore I cannot say that God exists and I am immortal, but I can say that God exists and that my “self” is immortal. This means that my faith in God is so closely connected with my nature that this faith cannot be separated from me.

The animal beginning disappears, the veil is taken from the future, the darkness disperses. It is then that we feel our immortality.

We live in this world like a child who enters a room where a clever person is speaking. The child did not hear the beginning of the speech, and he leaves before the end; and there are certain things which he hears but does not understand. In the same way, the great speech of God started many, many centuries before we started learning, and it will continue for many centuries after we turn to dust. We hear only part of it, and we do not understand the biggest part of what we hear, but nevertheless, a bit vaguely, we understand something great, something important. If you truly love goodness (God), then you cannot have doubts in your immortality.

The holy spirit which exists in people is liberated more and more. This will change our existing world order. Real science shows us how to apply our religious faith to our outer lives. Art shows us how to apply it to our feelings. The further any purpose the faster we should work toward it.

The longer I live, the more things I must complete.

The more we understand our divine nature, the more its rules should be fulfilled in our actions.

Everything is connected more closely in the spiritual world than in the material world. Every lie brings multiple lies, every cruelty brings more cruelty. Very often people are proud of the purity of their conscience only because their memory is too short.

Drop after drop, water fills the vessel; in the same way those who want to be good, become filled with goodness.

Many of our vices exist only because they are supported by other vices; therefore, if we destroy our major vices, many others will disappear at once, in the same way as branches fall when you cut the trunk of a tree.

Be attentive to the appearance of evil. There is an inner voice in your soul which always tells you about approaching evil. You feel unpleasant, you feel ashamed. Believe in this voice; stop and seek to improve yourself, and then you will defeat evil.

At a certain level of self-awareness, a person understands something supernatural in himself. God exists because we exist. You can call it any other name, but there is no doubt that the superior life which created us exists. And you can call the source of this life God, or give it any other name.

God exists only for those who look for Him. Start looking: you will find Him in you and yourself in Him. Looking for God is like pulling a net in the water. When you pull the net, it is heavy and full of water, and yet when you pull it out, there is nothing in it. When you seek God with your intellect and your actions, God exists in you, and as soon as you decide that you have found God, and stop and become satisfied, you have lost him.

It is surprising that I could not see a very simple truth: behind and above this world and our lives, there is someone who knows why this world exists and why we exist in this world. And our lives are as bubbles in boiling water, which appear, rise to the surface, pop, and disappear. The unity of all living beings exists in this world where everybody and everything quietly seeks God. It is only unbelieving atheists who see eternal silence.

Just because a person does not understand God, he has no right to draw the conclusion that God does not exist.