So it is in real life: in moments of self-delusion, a religious person forgets that what happens in his physical life cannot interfere with what happens in his spiritual life.
In these periods, when your spirits have fallen, you have to treat yourself as an ill man.
A wise man has doubts even in his best moments. Real truth is always accompanied by hesitations. If I could not hesitate, I could not believe.
—HENRY DAVID THOREAU
He who hesitates is not distanced from God; it is he who believes unhesitatingly in someone else’s word that God exists or does not exist who is far from God.
September 17
The individual ownership of large areas of land is as unjust as the ownership of other people.
You cannot say that the existing laws regarding the possession of land are lawful. Violence, crime, and power have their source in these laws.
—HERBERT SPENCER
Private ownership of land came to be, not out of any natural relationships between people, but through robbery.
—HENRY GEORGE
The injustice of owning big pieces of land as prívate property, like any other injustice, is necessarily linked with many other injustices which are used to protect it.
September 18
Life’s essence lies, not in your body, but in your conscience.
The divine spark lives in all of us, and perpetually strives toward its origin.
—LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA
When you see that everything around you is impermanent, then you will perceive other, permanent and eternal things.
—DHAMMAPADA, a book of BUDDHIST WISDOM
You cannot see the soul, but only the soul can truly see the essence of things.
—The TALMUD
I call spirit that part of man which has independent existence and gives us the understanding of life.
—MARCUS AURELIUS
Let your spiritual side guide your material side, and not the other way around. In order to improve his state, a person should strive for spiritual not physical perfection.
September 19
Nothing can enlighten people’s lives and ease their burdens more than the understanding that they should serve God.
Religious disbelief and neglect is a great evil, but prejudice and lies are even worse.
—PLUTARCHUS
Life is short. Do not forget about the most important things in our life, living for other people and doing good for them.
—MARCUS AURELIUS
The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
—MATTHEW 20:28
Pay goodness for evil. We should be like trees that give fruits to those who throw stones at them.
You should accept yourself, not as a master, but as a servant, and then all your bad feelings, your anxiety, alarm, uncertainty, and dissatisfaction will be changed into calmness and peace. You will be filled inside with a clear vision of your purpose, and with a great joy.
September 20
All good things can be achieved only with effort.
Bad things are easy to do, good things are done only with work and effort.
—DHAMMAPADA, a book of BUDDHIST WISDOM
Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide, and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter by it. For the gate is small, and the way is narrow that leads to life, and few are those who find it.
—MATTHEW 7:13-14
The way to true knowledge does not go through soft grass covered with flowers. To find it, a person must climb steep mountains.
—JOHN RUSKIN
Look for the truth; it wants to be found.
—BLAISE PASCAL
A person cries out from pain when he takes up hard physical work after a period of idleness. Any rest from the struggle for spiritual improvement brings the same pain.
September 2l
The most important and necessary expression of freedom is to give your thought a specific direction.
Work toward the purification of your thoughts. Without bad thoughts you will be incapable of bad deeds.
—CONFUCIUS
Everything is in heaven’s power, except for our choice of whether to serve God or ourselves.
We cannot prevent birds from flying over our heads, but we can keep them from making nests on top of our heads. Similarly, bad thoughts sometimes appear in our mind, but we can choose whether we allow them to live there, to create a nest for themselves, and to breed evil deeds.
—MARTIN LUTHER
It is a sin, not only to do bad things, but even to think about bad things.
—ZOROASTER
September 22
Faith in the existence of eternity is our exclusively human quality.
The soul does not live in the body as in a house, but as in a tent, a place of temporary dwelling.
—INDIAN WISDOM
Who brought me into this world? According to whose command do I find myself at this exact place, during this particular time? Life is the remembrance of a very short day we spent visiting this world.
—BLAISE PASCAL
Mortal people cannot live long; we have only a few moments. But our soul does not age. It believes in eternal things, and it will live for all eternity.
—TORICLIDIS
Death is the destruction of the bodily organs with which I see my world during my life; the destruction of the glass through which I look at this world. The destruction of this glass does not mean the destruction of the eye itself.
Our understanding of eternity is the voice of God who lives within us.
September 23
No matter how big mankind’s store of knowledge seems to me in comparison with our previous ignorance, it is only an infinitely small part of all possible knowledge.
Socrates did not have the weakness of many scholars, the desire to know about all possible things, to learn the origins and explanations of things—what the Sophists call “the nature of things”—and to uncover the origins of the celestial bodies. Socrates said, “Is it true that people are so concerned with these earthly things? People wrongly think that they should know everything. They think that they can despise the most necessary and important fields of knowledge, and penetrate the mysteries that do not belong to us.”
—XENOPHON
Not only is real science not hostile to religion, in fact real science always supports it.
—JOHN RUSKIN
Knowledge is limitless, and the most scholarly and educated person is as far from true knowledge as an uneducated peasant.
—JOHN RUSKIN
We cannot imagine the scope of our ignorance, just as a blind man cannot imagine darkness until he can see.
—IMMANUEL KANT
It is better to know less than necessary than to know more than necessary. Do not fear the lack of knowledge, but truly fear unnecessary knowledge which is acquired only to please vanity.
September 24
It would be possible to eat meat if it were justified by any serious considerations. But it isn’t; and meat eating is simply a bad thing that exists without any justification at all.
What nature of struggle for existence or kind of madness forces you to shed blood with your hands in order to eat animals? Why do this, if you have all the comforts of life?