A Calendar of Wisdom

Do not fear poverty, but beware wealth.

If only people who seek wealth could clearly see what they would lose by having it, they would put the same amount of effort into getting rid of this wealth as they now put into acquiring it.

A wise man does not wish to change his situation, because he knows that it is possible to fulfill the law of God, the law of love, in every situation.

A wise man looks for everything inside of himself; a madman seeks for everything in others.

I never complain about my fate. Once, I did not have shoes, and I complained to God. I went into church with a heavy heart and in the church I saw a man without both feet. So I thanked God that he had given me both feet, and that my only problem was that they were unshod.

A wise man innately knows how to act without searching, because he has the divine within himself. The further you search and seek, the less you know.

You should treat your thoughts the way you treat your self, and treat your wishes the way you treat your children.

Try to establish an inner silence in yourself, a complete silence of your lips and your heart. Then you will hear how God speaks to us, and you will know how to fulfill His will.

The more upset a person is with other people, and with circumstances, and the more satisfied he is with himself, the further he is from wisdom.

Violence is harmful because it is usually dressed in wealth, and it therefore arouses some respect for those things which should arouse disgust.

People who have power are sure that it is only violence that guides people, and so they use violence to support the existing order. But the existing order is not based on violence, but on public opinion.

A person is not created either to subdue others, or to follow the orders of others. People are corrupted by both ways of behavior. In the first they assume too much importance, in the second, too little respect. In both ways there is very little dignity.

Our life would become wonderful if we could see all the disgusting things which exist in it.

Subduing people through violence is never justice.

He who depends on violence behaves wrongly. The maker of beautiful speeches is not wise, only he who is free from hatred and fear is truly wise.

All violence is contrary to love: do not participate in violence.

The biggest obstacles to understanding the truth are lies disguised as truth.

In real life illusions can only transform our life for a moment, but in the domain of thoughts and the intellect, misconceptions may be accepted as truth for thousands of years, and make a laughingstock of whole nations, mute the noble wishes of mankind, make slaves from people and lie to them. These misconceptions are the enemies with which the wisest men in the history of mankind try to struggle. The force of the truth is great, but its victory is difficult. However, once you receive this victory, it can never be taken from you.

The exposure of a lie is as valuable to a community as a clearly expressed truth.

Freeing a person from misconceptions, false truths, and lies does not take anything from him; it gives him something important.

The progress of mankind is in revealing obstacles which are hiding from us.

Doubts do not destroy truth; they strengthen it.

Disbelief is not when a person believes or does not believe in something. It is when he prophesies those things in which he does not believe.

You will have moments in which you no longer believe in the existence of the spiritual dimension of life. Look at these moments as events in the development of your faith. A person who understands the spiritual nature of life may still at some point become afraid of death, usually for a short period of time, in the same way that you can see as you watch a scene at the theater and forget that you are watching a play, and become scared by what you are seeing as if it were real. So it is in real life: in moments of self-delusion, a religious person forgets that what happens in his physical life cannot interfere with what happens in his spiritual life. In these periods, when your spirits have fallen, you have to treat yourself as an ill man.

A wise man has doubts even in his best moments. Real truth is always accompanied by hesitations. If I could not hesitate, I could not believe.

He who hesitates is not distanced from God; it is he who believes unhesitatingly in someone else’s word that God exists or does not exist who is far from God.

The individual ownership of large areas of land is as unjust as the ownership of other people.

You cannot say that the existing laws regarding the possession of land are lawful. Violence, crime, and power have their source in these laws.

Private ownership of land came to be, not out of any natural relationships between people, but through robbery.

The injustice of owning big pieces of land as private property, like any other injustice, is necessarily-linked with many other injustices which are used to protect it.