A Calendar of Wisdom

Life is the constant approach to death; therefore, life can be bliss only when death does not seem to be an evil.

We say sometimes, “Here I will live in the rainy season, there I will live in the summer.” So a crazy man dreams, because he does not think about death. But then death comes, and it takes all people with it: the man who is busy, and he who is concerned with something, and he who is greedy, and he who is absent-minded. Neither your son, nor your father, nor family or friends can help you when death comes. A wise man, one who understands this, looks for the way which leads to calmness.

A man comes into the world with his hands pushed into fists, as if he wants to say, “All this world is mine.” A man leaves this world with his palms open, as if to say, “Look, I take nothing with me.”

You should live your life as if you are ready to say good-bye to it at any moment, as if the time left you is some pleasant surprise.

Your life is a small stretch of unlimited time. So have a good look at it, and make the best of it.

Remember, you do riot live in the world, you only pass through it.

Every person should decide questions of life and death for himself.

A wise man sets requirements only for himself; an unwise man makes requirements for others.

A soul does not learn; it simply remembers what it knew all the time.

A wise man always finds some support for himself in everything, because his gift is in obtaining goodness from everything.

Nothing will bring you peace except yourself.

Only the truth which was acquired by your own thinking, through the efforts of your intellect, becomes a member of your own body, and only this truth really belongs to us.

The soul knows everything. No new thing can surprise it. Nothing can be bigger than it. Let others be afraid, but the soul is not afraid of anything. It lives according to its own laws. It is bigger than space and older than time. It gives courage against all the misfortunes of life.

God lives in all people, but not all people live in God, and this is the source of their sufferings. A lamp cannot burn without fire, and a person cannot live without God.

Do you think that anybody can damage your soul? Then why are you so embarrassed? I laugh at those who think they can damage me. They do not know who I am, they do not know what I think, they cannot even touch the things which are really mine and with which I live.

All things in the world belong to me. Creation and destruction happen according to my will. The present world is just a shell, and I am the yolk.

The intellect questions, how and why? The dove does not ask, it says: I am love. It gives satisfaction without asking questions.

Fear nobody and nothing. That which is the most precious matter in you can be damaged by no one and by nothing.

Truth is not virtue, but the lack of vices.

The most common and the most widely used deceit is the wish to deceive not other people, but yourself. And this kind of life is the most harmful.

There are thousands of ways which lead to deception, and there is only one way which leads to the truth.

People should follow only the indisputable truth.

Truthfulness is the only real currency which circulates everywhere.

Let us be truthful. This is the mystery of rhetoric and virtue, this is the biggest mystery, this is the highest achievement in art and the major law of life.

One of the most common mistakes is to think that you can live without truth. The inner and outer consequences of even the smallest lies are usually more harmful than those small unpleasant things which result from telling the truth directly.

Humanity has never lived and cannot live without religion.

Religion is the necessity and prime condition of the life of an intellectual person.

The stronger the religious feeling is, the better one understands what is and what should be the guide of all one’s actions.

It is difficult enough to plug your ears in a big hall full of dancing people; now imagine that you are in an asylum. For one who destroys in himself his religious conscience, all of the religious activity of other people will produce a similar impression. But it is dangerous to think that you are more clever than the majority of religious mankind.

People often say that religion loses its power amidst humanity. This is not true, and this cannot be true. This happens because the people who think so observe only a small group of people, and there are always certain people who do not have religious feelings.