A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Selected from the World's Sacred Texts - Hardcover

Tolstoy, Leo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684837935 ISBN 13: 9780684837932

Publisher: Scribner, 1997

Synopsis

This collection of daily thoughts to nourish the soul from the world’s sacred texts by Leo Tolstoy feature gems of inspiration and wisdom—author Thomas Keneally calls this book “transcendent, and that we are grateful he lived long enough to endow us with his grand inheritance.”

This is the first-ever English-language edition of the book Leo Tolstoy considered to be his most important contribution to humanity, the work of his life's last years.

Widely read in pre-revolutionary Russia, banned and forgotten under Communism; and recently rediscovered to great excitement, A Calendar of Wisdom is a day-by-day guide that illuminates the path of a life worth living with a brightness undimmed by time.

Unjustly censored for nearly a century, it deserves to be placed with the few books in our history that will never cease teaching us the essence of what is important in this world.

About this title

About the Author

Leo Tolstoy grew up in Russia, raised by a elderly aunt and educated by French tutors while studying at Kazen University before giving up on his education and volunteering for military duty. When writing his greatest works, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy drew upon his diaries for material. At eighty-two, while away from home, he suffered from declining health and died in Astapovo, Riazan in 1910.

From the Back Cover

This is the first-ever English-language edition of the book Leo Tolstoy considered to be his most important contribution to humanity, the work of his life's last years. Widely read in pre-revolutionary Russia, banned and forgotten under Communism, and recently rediscovered to great excitement, A Calendar of Wisdom is a day-by-day guide that illuminates the path of a life worth living with a brightness undimmed by time. Unjustly censored for nearly a century, it deserves to be placed with the few books in our history that will never cease teaching us the essence of what is important in this world.

Reviews

Tolstoy's last major work reflects his desire to proselytize the moral faith and ideals he struggled to put into practice in his later years. Tolstoy believed that reading daily from the world's great literature was imperative for both his own spiritual edification and that of his readers, so he set himself the task of gathering a wide range of wisdom for every day of the year. He translated, abbreviated, and in many cases expressed entirely in his own words these "quotations" from diverse sources such as the New Testament, the Koran, Greek philosophy, Lao-Tzu, Buddhist thought, and the poetry, novels, and essays of both ancient writers and contemporary thinkers. An important book now released in English for the first time.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A Calendar of Wisdom

Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Selected from the World's Sacred TextsBy Leo Tolstoy

Scribner

Copyright © 1997 Leo Tolstoy
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0684837935

January 24

Nobody knows where the human race is going. The highest wisdom, then, is to know where you should go: toward perfection.

A wise man seeks wisdom; a madman thinks that he has found it.

PERSTAN PROVERB

It is not the place we occupy which is important, but the direction in which we move.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Your actions should be determined not by the desire of the people around you, but by the needs of all mankind.

April 23

Real goodness is always simple.

Simplicity is so attractive and so profitable that it is strange that so few people lead truly simple lives.

Do not seek happiness elsewhere. Give thanks to God, who made necessary things simple, and complicated things unnecessary.

GREGORY SKOVORODA

Most of our spending is done to forward our efforts to look like others.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Every great thing is done in a quiet, humble, simple way; to plow the land, to build houses, to breed cattle, even to think you cannot do such things when there are thunder and lightning around you. Great and true things are always simple and humble.

No one looks less simple than those people who artificially strive to seem so. Artificial simplicity is the most unpleasant of all artificial things.

July 9th

People mistakenly think that virtue lies in the knowledge of many things. What is important is not the quantity but the quality of knowledge.

Socrates thought that stupidity was incompatible with wisdom, but he never said that ignorance was stupidity.

We live in the age of philosophy, science, and intellect. Huge libraries are open for everyone. Everywhere we have schools, colleges, and universities which give us the wisdom of the people from many previous millennia. And what then? Have we become wiser for all this ? Do we better understand our life, or the meaning of our existence? Do we know what is good for our life?

JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU

Reading too much is harmful to your independence of thought. The greatest thinkers I've met among scholars are people who do not read too much.

GEORGE LICHTENBERG

Do not fear the lack of knowledge, fear false knowledge. All evil in this world comes from false knowledge.

Knowledge born in argument and discussion is to be doubted.

October 16

God is in all of us, and it is possible for all of us to find and understand him there.

To know yourself is to discover the good that lies within.

God is close to us, he is with us: the divine spirit is inside of us. If he were not, the power to be good would be beyond our reach. A person cannot be good without God.

LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA

If you are going through a hard time, work harder to understand God; as soon as you understand Him, all difficult things will become easy, and you will feel love and joy.

If a person does not feel a divine force within himself, this does not mean that a divine force does not exist in him, but that he has not yet learned how to recognize it.

Translation copyright © 1997 by Peter Sekirin

Continues...

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Edition details

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684837935
• ISBN 13: 9780684837932
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384
• Editor: Sekirin Peter