Real goodness is to serve God.
You should do goodness without choosing to whom. Good things, once done, will never disappear, even if you forget about them. There is only one way to be happy, and this is a sure way: to do goodness and to share this goodness with others.
August 20
Anyone who is engaged in really important things is very simple because he does not have time to create unnecessary things.
Every desire abates, and every vice grows after it is satisfied.
—HENRI AMIEL
Every new desire is the beginning of a new wish, the beginning of a new sadness.
—VOLTAIRE
Pleasure, luxury—these things you call happiness, but I think that to wish nothing is the happiness of God, and when you wish to have only small things, then you make yourself closer to this divine and high happiness.
—SOCRATES
Nature requires small things; the existing law requires many excessive things.
—LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA
People can live without need and without jealousy only when they lead a life of moderation.
August 21
A fruitful prayer is the establishment in your conscious mind of the understanding of life’s meaning, and you can experience this state during the best minutes of your life.
Prayer is understood as an inner formal religious service, a service to ask and achieve some compassion for yourself from the higher force; this is a misconception. On the other hand, the desire of our heart to please God with all our actions—this is the spirit of real prayer which should always exist in us.
—IMMANUEL KANT
But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name….
—MATTHEW 6:7-9
One hour of honest, serious thinking is more precious than weeks spent in empty talks.
You should pray every hour. The most necessary and the most difficult form of prayer is to remember—in spite of the numerous distractions of life—your obligations to God, to his law. You become scared, you become upset, you become embarrassed, you become too involved or distracted by something. But you should always remember who you are and what you should do. This is what a real prayer should be about. This is difficult in the beginning, but with time you can work and create this habit.
August 22
It is dangerous to disseminate the idea that our life is purely the product of material forces and that it depends entirely on these forces.
There are no people who can more confuse the notions of good and evil than the scholars of our time. Their science makes good progress in the study of the material world, but in the inner, spiritual life of humanity, it becomes an unnecessary and sometimes harmful thing.
False science and false religion express their dogmas in highly elevated language to make simple people think that they are mysterious, important, and attractive. But this mysterious language is not a sign of wisdom. The wiser a person is, the simpler the language he uses to express his thoughts.
—LUCY MALORY
The teaching about your inner life is the most useful one.
In our time science has started to give diplomas for idleness.
The real purpose of science is the understanding of the truth of this life. Its false purpose is the justification of evil in this world. These are the judicial sciences, political sciences, and especially theology, the science of religion.
August 23
If people were completely virtuous, they would never step aside from the truth.
And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
—JOHN 3:19-21
Don’t be afraid of a person in any position, in low or high standing, whether he is a scholar or an ignorant person. If you respect all people, you should love all people, and fear no one.
—WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
The consequences of any good thing which you have done in your life will die as soon as you step aside from the truth. The high spirit which lives in you and which is united with you is looking all the time for good and evil.
—MANU
Truth can be understood only by waiting and watching, and when you get one truth, two more will appear before you.
—JOHN RUSKIN
The truth is harmful only to evildoers. Those who do good love the truth.
August 24
People move, inconspicuously but ceaselessly, toward the kingdom of God, which will be achieved by unification in love.
Every single individual person, as well as all mankind together, will change, and will go on to higher stages without stopping in their development, the limit of which is God himself. And this time is coming.
—F. ROBERT DE LAMENNAIS
No, the word of all-powerful God has not been told completely. And his thought has not been understood completely in all its depth. He created and he creates, and he will create, for many eternal centuries after us; this the human mind cannot embrace.
—GIUSEPPE MAZZINI
I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled? Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division.
—LUKE 12:49, 51
The constant struggle between flesh and spirit will never be finished. This struggle is eternal and the essence of life. The purpose of life is loving, the penetration of everything with love. It is the slow and gradual change from evil to good, it is the creation of the real life, the life filled with love.
The human world is always on the way to perfection, and the understanding of this process of perfection is one of mankind’s biggest joys, and this joy is accessible to every person.
August 25
Work is the condition of existence in the material, physical world. If Robinson had not worked, he would have frozen to death and died from hunger, and everybody can see this. So labor is the necessary condition for the spiritual life as well, but not all people can see this clearly, though it is as obvious as the necessity of physical labor for the body.
If any would not work, neither should he eat.
—II THESSALONIANS 3:10
If you are doing nothing, it means you are doing bad things.
Those who do nothing, do bad things. Those who do nothing, have many associates and supporters. The brain of a lazy and idle person is the favorite stopping place of the devil.
Nature does not stop in its development, and it executes all kinds of idleness.
—JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
You should never be ashamed of any work, even the lowest and dirtiest, but you should be ashamed only of the dirtiest moral state, that is the idleness of your body, which is the necessary result of the consumption of the labor of others.
August 26
Justice is achieved not in striving for justice, but with love.
In order to hit the mark, you should aim farther than it stands, so you will achieve it; in order to be just, you should make a self-sacrifice, be unjust to yourself.