Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

“ Strong nation only the one that works, and only work gives courage and faith. To win, you need to have your arsenals full, armament - the most robust and advanced, army - trained and trusting to their superiors and into itself. All this is acquired: you just need to have a good desire and an approach. In the next century, the unlimited future belongs to labor. Let anybody not doubt this. And don’t we already see in the rising socialism the future embryo of the social law of the future, the law of labor for all, labor – which is the liberator and conciliator?
So, young people, take up the work. ”

“ The greatest villains of mankind, such as Nero and Peter the First, have always been particularly busy and preoccupied, not leaving a moment to stay with themselves without occupation or amusements.
But even if the love of work is not an obvious vice, it can under no circumstances called a virtue. Work can be just as little virtue as food. Work is a need, denial of which causes suffering, but it is not a noble cause. Exalting work to a virtue just as ugly, as exalting of food taking to goodness and virtue. ”

“ This soul is in unceasing work, in constant development, and in the pursuit toward light and truth. Until it receives all the light and wins the entire truth, it will torment man.
And here it is – it has never occupied that much, never imposed with such vigor its power on man as in our time. It is, so to speak, poured into the air that the world breathes. ”

“ Once this lesson is learned, it seems to me that peace must settle in any man, even in the most troubled. I know that there are minds troubled by infinity who suffer from mystery; to them I appeal brotherly, advise them to indulge in some labor of great difficulty, which they wouldn’t be able to see the end of. This is the pendulum that will give them a chance to go straight, it is this hourly scattering, it is a grain, thrown to mind so that the mind would grind it and make bread of it with the satisfied consciousness of completed duty. ”

“ There is nothing less healthy for both the individual and for the nations than a superstition: it destroys the effort, it dazzles, it is vanity for the weak. To continue to hold on to a legend, to hide reality from yourself, to believe that it’s enough to dream of the strength in order to be strong, - we've seen where it leads, to what terrible disasters. Peoples are told that they need to look up, to believe in a higher authority, to be exalted to an ideal. ”

“ And in order to the change in thoughts to happen, a person must stop, and pay attention to what he needs to understand. In order for people, who with a shout and roar of wheels rush to abyss, to be able to hear what those, who want to save them, shout to them, they must stop, first of all. Otherwise how can a man change his thoughts, his understanding of life, when he - relentlessly, with passion, also hurried by the people who assure him that this is all he needs – works based on that same false understanding of life that he needs to change? ”

“ I had only one faith, one force - work. I was only supported by the enormous work that I set for myself, there was always a goal in front of me, in the distance, to which I was moving, and it was enough to lift me up, to give me courage when the bad life overwhelmed me. Labor that I'm telling you about is truthful, daily work, a lesson, a responsibility that I have set for myself – to move at least one step forward in my field every day. ”

“ In essence, deep down in their souls, neither of them believe in the power of that remedy they offer, but both equally want only to avert their eyes away from the abyss before which the humanity now stands and if the humanity will continue to go down that path, it must inevitably crash. Some see this lulling remedy in mysticism, religion; others, the representative of whom became Zola, in the stupefying effect of the work for science. ”

“ The greatest of them must come to terms with being only a moment in the continual development of the human mind. It’s enough to recognize oneself a carrier of the word of one generation, even for the shortest time. And because you cannot halt the literature, and everything continuously develops, everything starts over again, you need to be prepared to see how the younger ones are born and grow, those who will replace you, those who perhaps will erase even the memory of us. ”

“ In essence, science is put aside from faith. It’s being sent back to its original place. Science is a simple exercise of mind and an allowed research as long as it doesn’t touch the supernatural and beyond. They say that the experiment has already been done, that science is not capable of once again conquer the sky that it emptied, unable to return happiness to souls, that naive world which it used to destroy. Time of its deceitful celebration is over. ”

“ Between truths established by science, and therefore unshakeable truths, and the truths that it will rip out tomorrow from the realm of the unknown in order to fix them, in turn, there is an undefined field of doubts and researches, which, I think, belongs to as much to literature as to science.
Here we can do our job of best pioneers, explaining the actions of unknown forces, according to the nature and the strength of mind. Because ideal is nothing else but the inexplicable, like the forces of that infinite world in which we bathe without knowing them. ”

“ And every time, regardless of the outrage of my misery, my lesson for me was relief and reinforcement. I always left my daily activities comforted, consoled, sometimes with a broken heart, but not yet collapsing and able to live until tomorrow.
Work! Gentlemen, just contemplate about it, it is the only law in the world, that regulator which pulls the organic matter to its certain goal! Life has no other meaning; there’s no other reason to be; we all show up just to make our share of labor and to disappear. ”

“ Science should stay modest, because it cannot know everything, cannot enrich everything, or heal everybody. And if you still do not dare to say to intelligent young people that science should throw its books and leave its teachers, there are already saints and prophets who walk among people, praising the virtue of ignorance, the clarity of simplicity, and for overly academic and getting old humanity - the need for refreshment in the depths of a prehistoric village among the ancestors, who have just separated from the Earth, up to every society and every knowledge. ”

“ People, who can do nothing with moderation, will be caught by the insanity, madness of love to each other. At first, this obviously will be not accomplished by itself. There will be misunderstandings, possibly even the bloody ones: that’s how we are brought up and conditioned to hate each other, often by the very people who are supposed to teach us to love. But because it is obvious that this great law of fraternity must be implemented at some time, I am confident that time comes when we will irresistibly wish for it to happen. ”

“ Those few individual souls, who separately from each other wished for the social rebirth, gradually found and called each other, got closer, connected, understood themselves, and formed a group, a center of attraction, to which other souls now lean from four sides of the world, like larks flying on mirror: they have composed such shared, collective soul, to help people ahead to fulfill together, deliberately, the unstoppably imminent unification, and to do the right progress of the nations who were just recently hostile to each other. ”

“ Everybody, already for long time, sees this ridiculously obvious absurdity of mutual arming of the people, which inevitably must end with either horrible killings or with already ongoing worldwide bankruptcy and the extinction of all people involved in this circle of arming. Besides, all people of our world recognize as mandatory for themselves either the religious Christian law of love or the secular law, based on the same Christianity, of respect for other's life, for identity, and for human rights. ”

“ In order for other art to flourish, for new beliefs to change the direction of the movement of mankind, it is necessary for this belief to have new ground, too, in which it could grow, because there is no new society without new soil. Faith does not rises from dead; it’s only possible to get a mythologies out of dead religions. Therefore, the next century will be only the assertion of our, in that democratic and scientific impulse that hooked us up and continues to do so. All I can assume is that in the literature we have closed horizons too much. ”

“ Moreover, everybody also recognizes that life, having carried on these pagan bases of fight as it does now, will inevitably lead mankind to the greatest disasters, and that time is already near. All people see that the more and more vigorously they will take each other's land and products of work, the more angry they’ll become, and the more unavoidably, sooner or later, those people from whom the most was taken will take from the robbers everything that they have been deprived from for so long, and will brutally repay for all the deprivation they have suffered. ”

“ All these people work tirelessly and diligently for science, but I think that the time and work of not only all these writers, but also many others, is not only wasted, but even harmful. Harmful, firstly, because to prepare these writings thousands of other people made the paper, font templates, typed, printed and, more importantly, fed and dressed all this workers of science, and also because of the fact that all these writers, instead of feeling guilty before society, just as they would feel if they’d gamble, play cards, continue with a calm conscience to do their good for nobody business. ”

“ And, what possibility there is for a person of our world, - the one who assumes the purpose of his life in his own personal, or family, or the nation’s benefits achieved only by an intense fight with other people who also strive for the same, in the midst of the institutions of the world which legitimize every fight and violence, - to really love those who are always on his way, and who he must inevitably ruin, in order to achieve the goals he set for himself? ”

“ Understand that the meaning of your lives can only be in fulfilling the will of the One Who sent you to this life and requires you to serve not your personal goals but His goal, which is in the establishment of unity and love among all creatures, in the establishment of the Kingdom of heaven, when the swords will be melted into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks, and when the lion will lie with the lamb, as prophets expressed that. Change your understanding of life, otherwise you’ll all perish, he said. ”

“ A person who works is always good. And because I am convinced that the only faith that can save us is the faith in the committed effort. It’s great to dream of eternity, but for an honest man it is enough to go through this life by completing his job".
Mr. Zola does not approve the fact that new teachers persuade the youth to believe in something undefined and unclear, and he is absolutely right on this, but, unfortunately, from his side he offers them faith, too, and the faith in something even more obscure and undefined: faith in science and in work. ”

“ I do not deny the crisis that we are experiencing; it is the fatigue and resentment at the end of this century, after such hectic and enormous work, the aim of which was to know everything and to say everything. It seemed that science that had just destroyed the ancient world, was supposed to recreate the world vividly according to the ideal that we have in regards to justice and happiness. ”

“ He loudly calls, he softly prays for the confirmation, which constantly eludes him for the sake of his own happiness, because the confirmed knowledge would make him immobile and dead. Because the strongest engine of human energy is unknown, because it cannot be established with veracity, he runs with vague ideals, and no matter how far he would deviate in skepticism and denial as a result of pride, anger, curiosity, fashion, he always returns to hope, without which he cannot live. ”

“ It’s enough for the people of our Christian world only to pause in their activities for a moment, to reflect on their situation, to apply the requirement of their reason and heart to the surrounding conditions of life, to see that their entire life, all their actions is a constant glaring contradiction with their conscience, mind, and heart. ”

“ It can’t be denied that if people did what they were prescribed to do thousands years ago, not only by Christ, but by all the sages of the world, i.e. if not loved others like themselves, but at least did not do to others what they don't want to be done to them, that if people instead of selfishness would buy into altruism, if their life habits would change from individualistic to collectivistic, as people of science in their bad lingo express the same idea, then people's lives would become happy instead of being distressed. ”