Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

“ The scripture shows the human, what all wise men of the world have taught, that humanity must move from division to unity; as a prophet said that all people must be taught by God and spears and swords be beaten into sickles and ploughs; and, as Christ said that all should be one like ‘I am one with the Father’. Reasoning shows the person that that the greatest well-being of people, to which all people aspire, can be obtained only by the most union and concord among people. ”

“ Consciousness reveals to the human that the essence of his life is in the desire of well-being of all existing, something inexplicable and inexpressible in words, and, at the same time, the closest and most understandable to a human. ”

“ A person living the Christian life, does not attribute much value to his joys, does not see them as the fulfillment of his desires but only as accidentally occurring on his life journey phenomena and sees them as something that by itself accompanies the one who seeks the Kingdom of God and His righteousness; and he regards his sufferings not as something that should not happen, but, on the contrary, as equally necessary in the life phenomenon as friction at work, knowing that as friction is a sign of the ongoing work, so as suffering is the sign of the produced work of God. ”

“ By its nature, love, the desire for well-being, tends to embrace all that exists. Naturally, it expands its limits by love at first to one's own family – wife, children, then to friends, then to one's fellows, countrymen; but love does not get satisfied with this and seeks to embrace everything existing.
4. In this incessant expansion of the limits of love, which constitutes the essence of the birth of spiritual being, is the essence of true human life in this world. The whole existence of a human in this world, from birth till death, is nothing but the birth of spiritual being in him. ”

“ If it was not for the temptation of property, people would not, without meaning, without a goal, spend their life energies on acquiring more and more possessions which cannot be used; and people suffering from a fight would not cultivate it in others. If it was not for the temptation of fellowship, there would be not one percent of the corruption that takes place now, people would not be so obviously and pointlessly ruining their bodily, mental powers by intoxicating substances, which do not increase but reduce their energies. ”

“ The fourth technique of religious deception is that, under the pretext of committing allegedly required by God deeds: prayers, sacraments, sacrifices, they collect together a lot of people, and via subjecting them to various stupefying effects, inspire lie on them, while dressing it as truth. They impress people with the beauty and grandeur of temples, the splendor of ornaments, utensils, clothes, glitter lighting, the sounds of singing and organs, incense, exclamations, and while people are under this charm, make efforts to impress upon their souls lies presented as truth. ”

“ First of all, a human never knows for how long he will need to provide for himself: for one month, one year, ten years, for the next generation; secondly, the cares about his property distract him more and more from simple joys in life; thirdly, he is always afraid of possibility that those possessions can be captured by other people, and always struggles to keep and increase the goods he has acquired, and, by giving his whole life to taking care of the future, he loses his real life. ”

“ Introduction I have lived until the age of fifty, thinking that that the life of a human, which occupies the time between his birth and death, is all his life; and that therefore the goal of a human is his happiness in this mortal life. ”

“ The greatest benefit from satisfaction of his needs – in food, drink, sleep, clothing, shelter – a person receives when he satisfies them like an animal, instinctively, and not to get pleasure but in order to eliminate the growing dissatisfaction: the greatest pleasure from food a human gets not when he eats refined foods but when he is hungry, and from clothing - not when it is very beautiful but when he is cold, and from home - not when it is luxurious but when he takes refuge in it from the weather. ”

“ But in addition to the benefits of true life, which a human receives in proportion to the degree of his freedom from the sin of lust, his condition in the world is such that if he gives in to his needs only to the extent that is necessary, and does not direct his mind to the increase of the pleasures of satisfying his needs, then this satisfaction gives him the greatest well-being attainable in this regard. ”

“ There can be only one answer: there is higher will, the motives of which are unattainable to a human. And this higher will has placed a human, and all existing, in this position. This same cause, for some reason incomprehensible to a person, enclosed itself, the desire of well-being of all existing – love, - in beings separate from the rest of the world, — is that same God which human recognizes within himself, also recognizable outside himself. ”

“ The evil of this temptation is that once a person allows the possibility of learning and understanding what constitutes the well-being of many people, there is no limit to assumptions about that that well-being of many is, which can be derived from any act, and therefore any act can be justified, and once the person believes that for the good of the many in the future you can sacrifice well-being and life of one man, there are no limits to evil that can be committed in the name of such consideration. ”

“ It is not in human power to get rid of the sin that grew into a habit over the course of many years, but it is totally in his power not to do acts which involve him in the sin, to reduce the attractiveness of the sin, to set himself into the impossibility of committing the sin, “to cut off the hand and pluck out the eye that seduce him”. ”

“ The foundation of a person’s true life is the desire for the well-being of all existing. Love in a person is enclosed within the limits of a separate being, and therefore it is naturally tends to expand those limits; so a person does not need to do anything to manifest love, it strives for its own manifestation; a person only needs to remove obstacles to its progression. ”

“ Speculations and fantasies about how the world or sin has occurred, and what will happen after death can be infinitely different, but the conclusions of reason on whether it is true that three God together constitute one, whether is it true that a person has died and then rose again, whether is it true that a person walked on the water or in his body flew to the sky, or that by consuming bread and wine I consume body and blood, - the conclusions of reason in regards to these questions are always the same for all people and throughout the world and are undoubtedly always correct. ”

“ To avoid falling under the deception of the impact on outer senses, people should remember the words of Christ that one needs to serve God not in some known location, but in the spirit and truth, and who wants to pray must go not into a temple, but lock himself in the privacy of his room, knowing that any splendor in worshipping God has deception for its purpose, and the more fascinating the service the more brutal deception is, and therefore he must not only not to participate in the stupefying religious ceremonies, but wherever possible expose their deception. ”

“ The fact that human life became so complicated as a result of the division of labor that a person cannot satisfy his own and his family's needs all by himself, and that it became now impossible in our world to avoid using the products of someone else's labor, still, this cannot prevent a person from striving toward the condition where he would give people more that he takes from them. ”

“ The devastating effects of the sins for individuals committing them, as well as for society among which the sins are committed, are so obvious that since ancient times people saw that sins lead to disasters, they preached and published laws against sins, and punished for them: forbade to steal, kill, debauch, smear, drink; but, despite the prohibition and executions, people continued and continue to sin, ruining their life and lives of those close to them. ”

“ The birth to the new life, liberating himself from the bonds of the animal nature, freeing himself from the sin is achieved by only slow efforts. Occasional prayer, through illuminating the human consciousness, opens his sin to him. At first this sin seems unimportant to him, acceptable, but the longer the person lives the more persistent becomes the need to free himself from sin. And if only the person does not fall into temptation covering sin, he inevitably comes to grips with sin. ”

“ The harm of this temptation consists in the fact that people who have bound themselves together in a partnership are guided not by common laws of reason but by their own exclusive rules, depart further and further from those reasonable principles of life common to all people, becoming less tolerant and more cruel to all outside their fellowship, and thus deprive themselves and others of true well-being. ”

“ But, having freed himself from religious deception and escaped temptations, a human still falls into sins. A person with awakened consciousness knows that the meaning of his life is only in serving God, and yet he commits sins out of habit, impeding both the manifestation of love and the attainment of true well-being. ”

“ In addition, by getting into a fight with people and other beings, a human achieves the contrary to what he seeks. Coming into a fight, he increases the likelihood that other beings will attack him, and that instead of subjugating others, he will be subjugated by them. The more a human advances in fighting, the more tension he causes. ”

“ The Christian may temporarily get carried away by joys, trying to produce and retain them; he may be temporarily troubled by sufferings, regarding them as something needless which could be avoided, but when he loses joy, or when he is in fear or in the pain of suffering, the Christian immediately regains his Christian dignity, recalls his mission, and then both joys and sufferings take their proper meaning, and he again becomes free and calm. ”

“ The sin of the lust for power, whether an inborn, inherited, or personal, is that a human, by putting his efforts toward achievement of the welfare of his separate being through fighting, does directly the opposite to what constitutes true life. ”