Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

“ Love is not for someone you love, not for yourself, but for the love itself. It is worth understanding, and immediately all evil gets destroyed from human life and the meaning of it becomes clear and joyful.
“Yes, it would be good. What can be better?” – tell people. – “It’d be good to love and to live for love, if everyone would live this way. But if I will live for love, will be giving everything to another, while others will live for themselves, for their own bodies – what will happen with me and not only with me, but with my family, with those whom I love and I can’t not to love.” ”

“ Can the purpose of your life be in yourself? – Probably not. What then, a man asks himself, what am I? – And the answer is the following: “I am something that is loving” – but at first I seemed to love only myself, and after living a little longer and thinking a little more, I see no point in loving myself, passing through life, dying. Yet I feel that I must love and so I love myself. But when I love just myself, I can’t help but feel that the subject is not worthy of my love; but I can’t not to love. My life is in love. What’s the solution? To love others, – family, friends, loving people. ”

“ Not to mention the fact that all those people who care about the structure of a better life, – all disagree among themselves, all argue with each other: some offer one arrangement considering it the best, others say that this arrangement is the most evil and only that what they offer is good. And still third ones blame all that and offer their own best and so on. But even if such best structure existed, – even if we would come up with some best arrangement, how to make sure that people will follow this arrangement, how to keep this good arrangement when people used to and love to live badly? ”

“ And no one or nothing can prevent one from loving people; and the more a person loves the more free and happy his life becomes.
So it happens that, no matter how hard a man tries, he is unable to satisfy the body, because it is not always possible to obtain what the body needs, and if he decides to get it, then one has to compete with other people. But man can always satisfy the soul, because the soul needs only love and to love there’s no need to fight anyone, but on the contrary, the more you love, the more you get drawn together with other people. ”

“ The salvation of you and all people is not in sinful violent acts of re-arrangement of life, but in an arrangement of your soul. Only by the arrangement of your soul, each person will gain for himself and for other people the greatest benefits and will make the best arrangement of life that people can only wish for. The true blessing is that which every human heart is searching, given to us is not in the future life arrangement maintained by violence, but now, given to all of us, everywhere, in every minute of life and even death, achieved through love. ”

“ And having lived this way for a while, ask yourself: was it hard for you and whether you’ve spoiled or improved your life and, judging by what your experience will tell you, decide whether it was true that the fulfilling the love gives the life blessing, or that’s just words. Experience it, try instead of repaying evil with evil to a bully, and instead of behind somebody’s back condemning the human who lives wrongfully, etc., – instead, try to respond with good to evil, and to say nothing bad about a person, and to be not rough even with animals, a dog, but with kindness and with tenderness. ”

“ Everyone – just love, love not only the loving, but all people, especially those hating, as Christ taught, and the life will become an incessant joy, and all the problems – which the lost people are trying so vainly to resolve by the violence – not only get solved, but cease to exist. “And we know that we have passed from death to life, if we love the brethren. Not loving brother does not have life eternal. ”

“ If understand it as life given to me in the body of mine, of John, Peter, Marie, and the whole purpose of life is to get as much as possible of any kind of enjoyments, pleasures, happiness to this “I”, John, Peter, Marie, so the life will always be for everyone unhappy and hostile.
The life will be unhappy and hostile because everything you want for yourself another person wants. And since everyone wants the best of everything for yourself as much as possible and that “best” is the same for all these people, then this “best” is never enough for all. ”

“ Talks about love we hear from long ago, yet nobody follows them. And they are impossible to follow. Give my life for love would only be possible when all people, somehow miraculously at once, would change their lives from the worldly, physical to spiritual, godly life. ”

“ I don’t devote myself to love because not everybody will do the same and I will remain alone“, – is wrong and is not good. This is the same as if a person who needs to work to feed himself and his children, would hesitate to work because others don’t work.
Yes, dear brothers, let’s focus our lives in strengthening love in ourselves and allow the world go as it will, i.e. as it is defined to it from the above. Let’s do this, and believe me, that we will get the greatest blessing for ourselves, and we’ll do to other people all the goodness which we only are able to accomplish. ”

“ It is the same in the business of life. In order to find out for certain how these teachings on love are applicable to the real life, give them a try.
Try this: for some period of time, decide in everything you do to follow the requirements of love: to live in a way so that in everything, first and foremost, you’d remember with any man, a thief, a drunkard, a rude manager or subordinates, not to retreat from love, that is, in dealing with that person, remember about what he needs, not about yourself. ”

“ And, therefore, what other people do, what is happening in the world, can’t have an effect on his actions. To love means to surrender to God, to do what God wants. And because God is love, God wants to bless everyone, and therefore can’t wish for a person performing His law to die.
Loving person, even being alone among the unloving, does not perish. And if they die among the people, as Christ died on the cross, then his death – both happy for him and meaningful for others, is not desperate or miserable, unlike the deaths of the worldly people. ”

“ For our life to be good, there’s only one remedy: for people themselves to be better. And when people become better, then the life will re-arrange itself into that what life must be among good people.
A long-time deception clouds people’s minds – a false belief that a good arrangement can lead bad people to a good life (as if it’d be possible to make good bread out of rotten grains) , and this deception has already done and continues to do a lot of harm to people. ”

“ Therefore, if people live everyone for himself, they cannot avoid taking away from each other, fighting, getting mad at each other, and so their life cannot be happy. Even when at times people get what they want, then this is always not enough for them and they try to get more and more. Besides, they are afraid that what they’ve got can be taken away from them, and they are jealous of those who got something they don’t have.
So if people perceive the meaning of their lives in serving each own body, then the lives of these people can’t not to be unhappy. ”

“ That’s what people say, soothing themselves in their false life they got used to. They say this, but deep down they know they are wrong. They know that this reasoning is incorrect. It’s wrong because for the benefit of the mundane carnal life all people need to change their lives all at once; but not for the spiritual life: not for love, for love toward God and people. ”