September 14

Violence is harmful because it is usually dressed in wealth, and it therefore arouses some respect for those things which should arouse disgust.

People who have power are sure that it is only violence that guides people, and so they use violence to support the existing order. But the existing order is not based on violence, but on public opinion.

A person is not created either to subdue others, or to follow the orders of others. People are corrupted by both ways of behavior. In the first they assume too much importance, in the second, too little respect. In both ways there is very little dignity.

— Victor Considérant

Our life would become wonderful if we could see all the disgusting things which exist in it.

— Henry David Thoreau

Subduing people through violence is never justice.

— Blaise Pascal

He who depends on violence behaves wrongly. The maker of beautiful speeches is not wise, only he who is free from hatred and fear is truly wise.

— Buddhist Wisdom

All violence is contrary to love: do not participate in violence.

September 13

A wise man does not wish to change his situation, because he knows that it is possible to fulfill the law of God – the law of love – in every situation.

A wise man looks for everything inside of himself; a madman seeks for everything in others.

— Confucius

I never complain about my fate. Once, I did not have shoes, and I complained to God. I went into church with a heavy heart and in the church I saw a man without both feet. So I thanked God that he had given me both feet, and that my only problem was that they were unshod. — Muslih-Ud-Din Saadi

A wise man innately knows how to act without searching, because he has the divine within himself. The further you search and seek, the less you know.

— Lao-Tzu

You should treat your thoughts the way you treat your self, and treat your wishes the way you treat your children.

— Chinese Wisdom

Try to establish an inner silence in yourself, a complete silence of your lips and your heart. Then you will hear how God speaks to us, and you will know how to fulfill His will.

The more upset a person is with other people, and with circumstances, and the more satisfied he is with himself, the further he is from wisdom.

September 12

You cannot serve both god and the devil. Merely tending to the growth of your wealth has nothing to do with the requirements of the truly spiritual life.

It seems to me that the old prejudice that wealth brings happiness has begun to be discredited.

The love of great wealth commends you, "Bring me your soul as a sacrifice," and people will do so.

— Saint John Chrysostom

Excessive dress prevents the body from moving freely. Excessive wealth interferes with the movements of our soul.

— Demosthenes

The desire for wealth can never be satisfied. Those who have it are excited by the wish to have more, and yet more.

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

Do not fear poverty, but beware wealth.

If only people who seek wealth could clearly see what they would lose by having it, they would put the same amount of effort into getting rid of this wealth as they now put into acquiring it.

September 11

The real faith attracts people to itself not because it promises goodness to those who believe, but because it is the only escape, not only from all the problems and troubles and misfortunes of our life, but also from the fear of death.

If you know that you lack faith, know also that you are in one of the most dangerous situations in this world a person can be in.

It is bad not to have something for which you are ready to die.

Look at the causes of the misfortunes from which mankind suffers. Push beyond the obvious causes to the root causes, and you will inevitably find that the most basic, the most important cause of each and every one of humanity's problems is the weakness of faith that comes from a false attitude to the world and its origin.

Salvation lies not in rituals and not in a particular creed, but in a clear understanding of the meaning of your life.

September 10

The voice of conscience makes no mistakes. It wants, not the fulfillment of the animal self, but its denial or sacrifice.

A Christian who does not know where he goes (John 3:8), or what is given to him by God (John 3:34), does not know his life's real purpose.

— Fyodor Strakhov

As our self-interest diminishes, our anxieties disappear, and then comes quiet and firm joy, which always diffuses us with a good spiritual disposition and a clear conscience. Every good deed helps to kindle this feeling of joy within us. The egoist feels lonely, surrounded by threatening and alien events; all his desires are sunk in his own concerns. A kind man lives in a world of beneficent events, whose goodness matches his own.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

A person who lives only for the concerns of his body may become lost in the labyrinth of an animal and sensual life, while the soul will always find truth; it will find the way.

— Lucy Malory

The voice of your conscience can always be singled out above the noise of your other wishes, because it always wants something seemingly useless, seemingly senseless, seemingly incomprehensible, but at the same time something actually beautiful and good, which can be achieved only through effort. 

September 9

The knowledge we now accept as science interferes with more than it supports the goodness of human life.

Astronomy, mechanics, physics, chemistry, and all other sciences together and differently, all study the particular sides of life, but they do not come to any conclusion about spiritual life of mankind.

Science fulfills its purpose, not when it explains the reasons for the dark spots on the sun, but when it understands and explains the laws of our own life, and the consequences of violating these laws.

— John Ruskin

No matter how great our knowledge may be, it cannot help us fulfill our life's major purpose - our moral perfection.

September 8

At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight.

— Matthew 11:25-26

The world would be a terrible place without newborn children, who bring with them innocence, and the hope of man's further perfection.

— John Ruskin

Childhood is blessed by heaven because it brings a piece of paradise into the cruelties of life. All of these thousands of everyday births are fresh additions of innocence and purity, which fight against the end of mankind, and against our spoiled nature, and against our complete immersion into sin.

— Henri Amiel

O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in ll the earth! Who hast set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

— Psalms 8:1-2

What time could be better than childhood, and what virtues could be better than innocent joyfulness, and the need for love? They are the purest manifestations of life. You should respect every person, but you should respect a child above all, and not destroy the innocent purity of his soul.

September 7

If life is good, then death which is the necessary part of life, is good as well.

Real life exists only in the present. The future has no meaning.

The purpose of real life is to fulfill the law of God, which exists eternally: it always existed, it exists now, and it always will exist.

Do not bother about what will happen someday, somewhere, in the far away distance, in a future time; think and be very attentive to what happens now, here, in this place.

— John Ruskin

As soon as you go into the future or the past, you go away from God, and you feel lonely, deserted, and enslaved.

The future does not really exist. It is created by us in the present.

There is a condition in which a person feels himself the architect of his life. It occurs when he concentrates all his efforts and all his intellect on the present moment.

September 6

People jump back and forth in pursuit of pleasures only because they see the emptiness of their lives more clearly than they do the emptiness of whichever new entertainment attracts them.

— Blaise Pascal

The things we do to make our life more comfortable remind me of an ostrich who hides his head in order not to see his enemies. We behave even worse than an ostrich. In order to achieve some dubious questionable future, we definitely destroy our life in the clearly defined present time.

People today foolishly try to believe that all the world's senselessness and cruelty — the richness of the few, the great poverty of the many, the violence, and warfare — happens outside their own lives and does not interfere with them and their way of life.

A misconception remains a misconception, even when it is shared by the majority of the people.

September 5

You should teach others with a good example, but if you teach with evil, then you do not teach, but destroy.

Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.

— Matthew 18:21 22

Sinful people had once accepted their right to punish others and most of our misfortunes started from this.

If you think someone is guilty of wrong doing you, forgive him. If you have never forgiven the guilty before, you will experience a new joy: the joy of forgiving.

Punishment is always cruel, always painful.

The American Indians had no laws, no punishments, and no government. They obeyed the moral understanding of good and evil that is part of every human nature.

— Thomas Jefferson

The strongest proof that in the name of "science" we pursue unworthy and sometimes even harmful things is the existence of a science of punishment, which in itself is one of the most ignorant and offensive types of action known to man, a vestige of the lowest level of human development, lower than that of a child or a madman.

September 4

Real goodness is not something that can be acquired in an instant, but only through constant effort, because real goodness lies in constantly striving for perfection.

The following words were carved on the bathroom of the king Jinx-Hang: "Renew yourself completely every day, and starting afresh, from the beginning."

— Chinese Wisdom

The journey of the wise to virtue is as a journey to a remote land, or the ascent of a high mountain. People who travel to a faraway place start with a single step, and those who climb a high mountain start from the bottom.

— Confucius

And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.

— Luke 9:62

Strive for goodness without any expectations for rapid or noticeable success. You will not see the results of your efforts, because the further you progress, the higher the ideal of perfection toward which you strive, rises. The effort of striving for goodness, the process itself, justifies our lines.

September 3

God cannot be understood by the human intellect, only felt by the human heart. We only know that he exists, and regardless of whether we want it or not, we know this for sure.

The intellect is like a light that comes through a
translucent glass: I see it, and though 1 do not
know where it comes from, I know that it exists. We can say the same about God.

Believe in God, serve Him, but don't try to understand His essence. You will get nothing from your painful efforts except disappointment and fatigue. Do not even strive to find out whether he exists or not, just serve him as if he does, as if he is present everywhere. Nothing else is necessary.

— Philemon

No one except God comprehends the secret of the great beginning; no one can step outside himself.

— Omar Khayyam

We can understand the existence of God with our intellect only when we understand our complete dependence on him, as if we have the same feeling an infant understands when his mother holds him. A baby does not know who feeds him, who warms him, who takes care of him, but he understands that there is someone who does this, and even he loves the force in whose power he rests.

Do not be alarmed if the notion of God is not clearly expressed to you. The more clearly it is expressed, the further it is from the truth, from its foundation.

September 2

The closer people are to the divine, the more tolerant they are of the mistakes of others.

Those who don't believe in the spiritual foundations of their faith, who only pay lip service to the outer shell of their religious rituals, cannot be tolerant of others.

There is one hard and fast rule we must always remember: if a good end can be achieved only through bad means, either it is not good after all, or its time has not yet come.

Intolerant and power-hungry priests and pastors bring about the negation of religion.

— William Warburton

Unbelievers can be equally intolerant as those who believe with crude, primitive understanding.

— Jean France Duclos

A real truth, a real faith, needs neither worldly support nor an outer glamour, nor does it need to be forcefully introduced to others. God has time, for Him thousands of years pass as one.

Those who feel the need to spread their faith through violence and force either lack faith in God, or in themselves.

September 1

Soldiers who stand idle in a shelter during a battle as reinforcements will try to involve themselves in almost any activity in order to distract themselves from the impending danger. It seems to me that people who want to save themselves from life behave like these soldiers: some distract themselves with vanity, some with cards, politics, laws, women, gambling, horses, hunting, wine, or state affairs.

It is difficult to imagine what wonderful changes would occur to human lives if people would stop poisoning themselves with brandy, wine, tobacco, and drugs.

They say that there is one religious sect that at the end of their gatherings they turn down the lights and have an orgy. In our society, people who participate in constant dissipations turn down the light of the intellect with addictive things such as drugs, alcohol, and tobacco.

Making yourself addicted is not a crime, but it is a preparation for crime.

Some people say, “It is not important if you drink or smoke.” If it is of no importance, then why not just stop, if you know that you harm yourself and, with your example, others?