graf Leo Tolstoy

“ It is not a difficult matter to thresh with several flails, but to keep in order, not to get confused (and not only to thresh, but not to interfere with the others) , one has only to remember oneself, one’s own tempo while beating. But as soon as you have begun to think of others, to look at them, you get confused.
The same thing happens in life. Remember only yourself, your own work—and this work is one: to love, to enlarge love in yourself—not to think of others, of the consequences of your labour and the work of life will go on fruitfully, joyously. ”

“ Touching the earth, feeling the warmth of the sun, my limits come in contact with the limits of the sun. I am in the world (I project this into space. I can not do it otherwise though it is not so in reality) like a cell, not an immovable one, but one wandering and touching by his limits, not only the limits of other cells of the same kind, but other enormous bodies.
Better still, not to project this into space; I act and am acted upon by the greatest variety of beings; or, my division of a unit being associates with other divisions of the most various kinds. ”

“ I am sick of my body.
All this time I have not worked at all and I feel heavy melancholy. I am fighting against it by seeking in my life a task which is beyond this life. There is only one such: an approach to the perfection of God, to love. Yesterday it became so clear to me that life here is nothing else than a manifestation in these forms of the greatest perfection of God. “To live an age and unto the night”—that is in terms of time. To live for a universal life and for this one—that is in terms of space. ”

“ I am joyous, that in old age there has been disclosed absolutely a new condition of the great indestructible good. And this is not imagination, but a change of soul as clearly perceived as warmth and cold, it is a going over from confusion, suffering, to a clearness and peace and a going over which depends upon myself. Here, in truth, is where wings have sprouted. As soon as it becomes difficult, painful, to walk on foot, you spread the wings. ”

“ And, second, to do that in which man alone is absolutely free: to change selfishness in his soul and everything which flows from it: malice, greed, violence, and everything else by love and by all that which flows from it: reasonableness, humility, kindness and the rest. It is impossible to turn back the wheel of a machine by force,—they are all bound together with cogs and other wheels—but to let the steam go which will move them or not let it go is easy; thus it is terribly difficult to change the very outer conditions of life, but to be good or bad is easy. ”

“ To place before myself the most complex and confused thing which demands my participation. On all sides it seems there exist insoluble dilemmas; it is bad one way and worse the other. And it is only necessary to carry over the problem from the outer realm into the inner, into one’s own life, to understand that this is only an arena for my inner perfection, that it is a test, a measure of my moral development, an experiment as to how much I can and want to do the work of God, the enlargement of love, and everything resolves itself so easily, simply, joyously. ”

“ The hundred-years readiness for sacrifice for the common good, the willingness to go to exile and death of four generations of men and women, the red flag now flying over the Winter Palace in Petrograd with the letters of gold, “Proletarians of all Nation Unite,” the insistent call to the peoples of the world to overthrow all oppressors and live together in mutual harmony, the trumpet calls of a democracy whose tones are so strange and new, that we across the borders seem not to hear or understand them, all have their spiritual counterpart in the pages of this book. ”

“ Thousands in Russia took his life as an example and left the vainglories of the city with all its false standards and went to live among the people. They went not only to serve them but to be one of them, to live by the sweat of their brow as the masses did, because it was the only moral thing to do, and because the greatest happiness lay in the spiritual values of life, and because, as Tolstoi himself says, “It is good with them, but with us it is shameful.” ”

“ The meaning of life is only one: self-perfection—the bettering of one’s soul. “Be perfect like our Father in Heaven.”
When things are difficult, when something tortures you, remember that in life, only you are the life—and immediately it will become easier. And joyful. As a rich man rejoices when he gathers his wealth, so will you rejoice if you place your life only in this. And for the attainment of this, there are no barriers. Everything which appears like sorrow, like a barrier in life—is a wide step which offers itself to your feet that you may ascend. ”

“ All these last days, especially yesterday, I have been feeling and applying to life, the consciousness that the end of life is one: to be perfect like the Father, to do that which He does, that which He wants from us, i.e., to love; that love should guide us in the moments of our most energetic activity, and that we breathe with it alone in the moments of our greatest weakness. ”

“ Just as soon as you begin to think of that which you are producing, about the results of your labour, just as soon as you begin to modify it in accordance with its results—your work becomes confused and ceases, and there comes the consciousness of the vanity of life. The master of life gave to each one of us separately such a labour, that the fulfilment of that labour is the most fruitful work. ”

“ The 2nd thing that I have been thinking about art, is that nowhere is conservatism so harmful [27] as in art. Art is one of the manifestations of the spiritual life of man, and therefore, as when an animal is alive, it breathes and discharges the products of its breathing, so when humanity is alive, it manifests activity in art. And therefore, at every given moment it must be contemporaneous—the art of our time. One ought only to know where it is (not in the decadence of music, poetry, or the novel) ”

“ This explanation came to me: the soul, the spiritual essence, can live in its own centre or within its own limits. Living in itself, it is not conscious of its limits; living in the periphery it incessantly and painfully feels its limits. A release from this state is the recognition of the illusion of the material world, to go away from the limits, to concentrate in oneself. ”

“ And the destruction of the body of a man, is that a sign of the destruction of his life? In order to answer this question one must first decide what is life?
Life is the consciousness of my separateness from other beings, of the existence of other beings and of those limits which separate me from them. My life is not bound up with my body. There may be a body, but no consciousness of separateness like for a sleeping one, an idiot, an embryo or for those who have fits. ”

“ They bring as a proof that art is good, the fact that it produces a great impression on you. Yes, but who are you? On the decadents, their works produce a great impression on them. You say that they are spoilt. But Beethoven, who does not produce an impression on the working man, produces such an impression on you, only because you are spoilt. Who then is right? What music is beyond question as to its value? That kind which produces as impression on a decadent and on you and on the working man; simple, understandable, popular music. ”

“ And above all, that the desire for the good for oneself, love for oneself, could exist in man only up to the time when reason had not yet awakened in him. But as soon as reason had wakened in him, then it became clear to man that the desire for the good for himself—a separate being—was futile, because the good is not realisable for a separate and mortal being. ”

“ The delusion of man who has awakened to consciousness and who continues to consider his own separate being as himself, is that he considers a tool as himself. If you feel pain at the disturbing of the good of your separate being, it is as if you felt on your hand the blows on the tool with which you work. ”

“ In the letter to A. C. Chertkov of October 13, 1897, Tolstoi wrote: “How many people are there with whom one does not speak unreservedly, because you know that they are drunk. Some are drunk with greed, some with vanity, some with love, some simply with drugs. Lord forfend us from these intoxications. These intoxications place no worse boundaries between people than religion, patriotism, aristocracy do, and prevent that union which God desires.” ”

“ Each one of us is that light, that divine essence, love, the Son of God, enclosed in a body, in limits, in the coloured lantern which we have painted with our passions and habits—so that everything we see, we see only through this lantern. To raise oneself so as to see above it, is impossible ”

“ Death is nothing else than such a transformation, dependent from another partition from the world, another personality: Here I consider as myself, my body with my senses, and then something else will detach itself to be myself. And then the whole world will become something else. ”

“ If this is to be expressed in time, then to live so as to prepare one’s soul to the passing-over into a better world: if this is to be expressed accurately in terms outside of time, then it is to fuse one’s life with its timeless principle, with the Good, with Love, with God. I am afraid only of one thing, that this strong consciousness acting beneficially on me, that the only thing reasonable and free and joyous is the life in God, be not calloused, that it do not lose its effect of lifting me out of the petty annoyances of life, and of freeing me. ”

“ And that is why, though it is legitimate for people not knowing a higher means of union, to use a lower, it is illegitimate, that they look upon their own lower means as a general and unique one, and want to compel those for whom it cannot be necessary to use it. The principal step before humanity now consists in this, that people should not only recognise and admit the means of Christian union, but that they should recognise that it is the highest, the one to which all humanity is striving and to which it will inevitably reach. ”

“ I cannot write and I suffer, I force myself. How stupid! As if life lay in writing. It does not even lie in any outer activity. It is not as I will, but as Thou wilt. It is even fuller and more significant without writing. ”

“ But no matter how that which we consider as the world, our attitude to the world, should change—one thing is unalterably such as we know it and is always unchanging, it is that which knows. And it knows not only in me, but in everything which knows. This thing which knows is the same everywhere and in everything and in itself. It is God, and it is that for some reason limited particle of God which composes our actual “self.” ”

“ To establish the Kingdom of God on earth, of union, of serving one another—and to destroy hostility, God does not have to do it himself. He has placed His reason in man, which frees love in man and everything which He desires will be done by man. God does His work through us. And there is no time for God—or there is infinite time. When he has placed reasoning love in man, he has already done everything. ”

“ Memory is nothing else than the consciousness of the past, of the past freedom. If I were unable to dust or not to dust, I would not be conscious of dusting, if I were not conscious of dusting, I would not have the choice of dusting or not dusting. If I did not have consciousness and freedom, I would not remember the past, I would not unite it into one. ”

“ Only not to love oneself, one’s very self, one’s own Leo Nicholaievich (Tolstoi) —and you will love both God and people. You are on fire and you can’t help but burn; and burning you will set fire to others and you will fuse with that other fire. To love oneself means to be niggardly with one’s light and to put out the fire.
4) When a man says an obvious untruth or an offence to you, then certainly he doesn’t do it from joy: and both are very difficult. ”

“ We all think that our duty, our vocation, is to do various things: bring up children, make a [194] fortune, write a book, discover a law in science, etc. But for all the work is only one thing: to carry out one’s own life—to act so that life would be a harmonious, good, and rational matter. And the work ought to be not before people, to leave behind one a memory of a good life, but the work is before God: to present to Him oneself, one’s soul, better than it was, nearer to Him, more submissive to Him, more in harmony with Him. ”

“ Violence can neither weaken nor strengthen a spiritual movement. To act on spiritual activity by force is just like catching the rays of the sun—no matter how you cover them, they will always be on top. ”

“ Sometimes I begin to lay out patience, or hear an irritating conversation, contradiction, or am dissatisfied with my writing, with the condemnation of people, or I regret something—and suddenly I remember that it only seems so to me, because I am bent over searching on the floor, and it suffices to straighten up to my full height and everything that was disagreeable, irritating, not only vanishes, but helps the joys of triumph over my human weakness. ”

“ The principal thing which I wanted to say about art, is that it does not exist in the sense of some great manifestation of the human spirit as it is understood now. There is play, consisting in the beauty of construction, in sculpting figures, or in representing objects, in dancing, in singing, in playing on various instruments, in poetry, in fables, in stories, but all this is only play and not an important matter to which one could consciously devote his strength. ”