You must know firmly and feel deeply that you should dedicate every day to the good of your fellows, doing everything you can for them. You have to do it and not talk about it.
—JOHN RUSKIN
If you cannot teach yourself to seek possibilities for doing good and to do good at every possible occasion, then at least do not miss a chance to do good.
May 22
The greatest changes in the world are made slowly and gradually, not with eruptions and revolutions.
The same things happen in one’s spiritual life.
All great thoughts are living thoughts, and they can grow and be changed. And they change and grow as a tree, and not as a cloud.
—JOHN RUSKIN
All really great things are happening in slow and inconspicuous ways.
The process of life should be the birth of a soul. This is the highest alchemy, and this justifies our presence on earth. This is our calling and our virtue.
—HENRI AMIEL
Our life is unceasing wonder, growth, and development.
—LUCY MALORY
There is nothing more harmful for your inner perfection than the understanding that you are doing well. The way to happiness, the way to real moral improvement, moves so invisibly, so inconspicuously, that a person can see his successes only after great, lengthy periods of time.
If you think that you are moving toward perfection and you notice this, then you should know that you are mistaken, that you have stopped and are moving backward.
May 23
We should be satisfied with the small things in life. The less we need, the less trouble we can have.
It is a great happiness to have what you desire; but it is an even greater happiness not to want more than you already have.
—MENEDEMUS
Who is a wise man?—He who studies all the time.
Who is strong?—He who can limit himself.
Who is rich?—He who is happy with what he has.
—The TALMUD
Nature needs small things, but your imagination needs much.
From pleasures appear sadness and fear. He who is free from pleasures does not have either fear or sadness.
—BUDDHIST WISDOM
The initial joy on becoming free is better than being a king; it is more beautiful than going to heaven; it is more important than commanding whole worlds.
—BUDDHIST WISDOM
The growth of your desires is not the way to perfection, as many people think. To the contrary, the more a person limits himself, the better he can understand his human dignity, and the more free, the more brave he becomes, and most importantly, the more capable of serving God and other people.
May 24
Love is one of the manifestations of God in man.
The purpose of life is to express love in all its manifestations.
In order to be happy, you should love—love with self-sacrifice, love all and everything, and spread a network of love everywhere. No matter who gets into this net, catch them all and fill them with love.
Everyone can recall a moment, universal to all, perhaps from early childhood, when you wanted to love everyone and everything—your father, your mother, your brothers, evil people, a dog, a cat, grass—and you wanted everyone to feel good, everyone to feel happy; and even more, you wanted to do something special so that everyone would be happy, even to sacrifice yourself, to give your life so that everyone should feel happy and joyful. This feeling is the feeling of love, and it must be returned to, for it is the life of every person.
Anything you do should he filled with love.
May 25
You should be careful not to follow bad examples. When you hear your neighbor slandering others, try to stop him.
—From the BOOK OF DIVINE THOUGHTS
There is no worse harm for a person with a strong intellect than the temptation to make witty remarks that blame and mock his neighbors.
Making jokes and blaming and mocking others is like covering a dead body with a nice sauce and presenting it as a meal. Without the sauce, you would turn away, but with it, you find you can easily eat this distasteful meal.
Never listen to those who blame others and speak well about you.
You have to think about what you say; only then will you feel quiet and kind and filled with love. The more you are irritated, the more excited you become, the more care you must exercise not to sin with your words by abusing others.
May 26
The manner of one’s death can be in accord with the manner of one’s life, and therefore it can be a moral action. An animal simply dies, but a human should return his soul to its creator.
—HENRI AMIEL
Christ’s greatest words were said immediately before his death, when he forgave his persecutors, who did not understand what they did. The words and actions of a dying person have great power over people, and thus it is important both to live a good life and to die in a good way. A good death takes away the sins of a bad life.
During the minutes of death, a person can see a candle, in the light of which he reads the book of a life filled with problems, lies, evils, and misfortunes. And, in the minutes of dying, this candle lights up all the world with a very bright and clear light, and brightens up all the corners of a person’s life, even those corners which were always covered with darkness; and then it makes some slight noise, and the light goes down and disappears forever.
When you get ready to die, do not worry about the usual things, like following rituals or taking care of everyday business. Be prepared so that you can die in the best way possible. Use all the mighty influence of those powerful strong minutes of death, when a person exists partially in the other world, and his words and deeds have special power over those who remain in this world.
May 27
Very often, all of the activity of the human mind is directed not in revealing the truth, but in hiding the truth. The potential of the human mind to act this way is our major source of temptation.
The court jury has, as its raison d’âtre, the task of preserving society as it exists now, and therefore, it persecutes and executes those who stand higher than the general level of society, and it serves those who are lower than the general level.
A man cannot do everything; but this cannot be an excuse for doing bad things.
—HENRY DAVID THOREAU
I love peasants and farmers; they are not scholarly enough nor educated enough to tell sophisticated lies.
—CHARLES DE MONTESQUIEU
If you see that an action is explained by a very sophisticated reasoning, then you can be sure that this action is bad. The decisions of the conscience are always strict and simple.
May 28
For the pagan world, a man’s richness indicates his glory and importance; in a truly Christian world, the great wealth of a man is an indication of his weakness and lies.
People are so involved in their material interests that when they look at the manifestations of the human soul, and at pure relationships between people, they look at them from the point of view of how to improve their material well-being. Respectability is often measured by one’s wealth, and not by his real inner spiritual value.
—After RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The possession of great wealth is a school of pride, cruelty, self-admiration, and dissipation.