A Calendar of Wisdom

If you are doing nothing, it means you are doing bad things. Those who do nothing, do bad things. Those who do nothing, have many associates and supporters. The brain of a lazy and idle person is the favorite stopping place of the devil.
Nature does not stop in its development, and it executes all kinds of idleness.
You should never be ashamed of any work, even the lowest and dirtiest, but you should be ashamed only of the dirtiest moral state, that is the idleness of your body, which is the necessary result of the consumption of the labor of others.
Justice is achieved not in striving for justice, but with love. In order to hit the mark, you should aim farther than it stands, so you will achieve it; in order to be just, you should make a self-sacrifice, be unjust to yourself.
Not a single person can be completely just in all his deeds, but a just person can be completely different from an unjust one with his efforts, in the same way as a truthful man is different from a liar, with his efforts to speak only truth.
There is only one law of life which is really precious: though you meet all the time with injustice, remain humble.
You cannot be completely just. One time you do too little, the other time you do too much. There is only one way not to sin against justice; always to change things, to improve things, to make them better.
The best and the most important object for every person is his inner self, his spiritual being.
A person who knows all sciences but does not know himself is a poor and ignorant person. He who does not know anything except for his inner spiritual self is an enlightened person.
When you feel the desire for power, you should stay in solitude for some time.
The way to fame goes through the palaces, the way to happiness goes through the markets, the way to virtue goes through the deserts.
A person always has a place to be safe from all of his misfortunes, and this place is his soul.
If you could only know who you are, all your troubles would seem utterly unnecessary and trivial.
Faith is the foundation on which all else rests; it is the root of all knowledge.
There are two types of faith in this world. The first is faith in things other people say, faith in people; there are many varieties of this type of faith. The second is faith in God; this type of faith is unvarying, and it is necessary for all people.
Faith is the necessary property of the soul. Feel the essential meaninglessness of those things which are well-known to you, and the greatness of things which are unknown but important.
Cleave to the teachings of Christ completely, and let go of other teachings, just as a sailor reads his compass, though other signs around him might contradict it.
People who believe they do not have faith are wrong; they simply don’t realize it, or don’t want it, or cannot express it.
If in his soul, a person understands God, he understands his connection to all the world's people.
Do not be proud, no matter what high position you occupy in life. In you and in me and in every other person lives the same God, the same life force; you look down on me in vain; we are all equal beings.
I am filled with a great thought: that of the greatness of my soul, its unity with God. My soul is not united with God in submission, but through its ability to understand Him, and through Him, to be eternal.
We are all children of the same father, and it is unnatural not to love our brothers.
Those who are on top of the mountain can see the sunrise sooner than those who live in the valley. So, too, with those who achieve spiritual heights: they can see the heavenly sunrise sooner than those who live a material life. But the time will come when the sun will rise so high in the sky that everyone will see it.
We should hope that the day will come when all people perceive that the life of a man is great only in its service to his brothers, for he is united with them by God.
Powerful forces are at work in this world. No one can stop them. We see their signs in a new understanding of religion, a new respect for people, a new feeling of brotherhood.
As soon as the higher ideal is put before us, all false ideals will fade away as the stars fade away when they meet the sun.
Any work of false art praised by critics is a door through which “hypocrites of art” enter our minds.
The creation and sale of most art today is pure prostitution. The comparison is true in every detail. Real art can only rarely be created even by a real artist; like a child in a mother’s womb, it is the ripened fruit of his prior life. False art, though, can be ceaselessly produced by craftsmen, according to the dictates of a market. Like a faithful wife who loves her husband, real art does not need any excess decoration; like a prostitute, false art demands to be decorated. True art comes out of an artist’s urgent need to express the feelings that have formed inside him, just as a mother needs to give birth to her baby. False art answers only to profit. Real art brings new feelings into our life, as a woman brings a new person into the world. False art corrupts: it makes a person dissipated, distracts him, weakens his spiritual power. Everyone must understand this, in order that they shun the terrible proliferation of this dirty, dissipated type of art which is, on its face, prostitution.
You cannot sell your talent, your genius; as soon as you do, you are a prostitute. You can sell your work, but. not. your soul.
Until they throw the money changers out of the temple of art, it will never be a real temple. But the time will come when these salesmen will be sent away from the temple of art.