Wise Thoughts for Every Day: On God, Love, the Human Spirit, and Living a Good Life

Wise Thoughts for Every Day

Also by Peter Sekirin:

The Dostoevsky Archive

(translator)

The Complete Early Chekhov, by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Divine and Human, by Leo Tolstoy

A Calendar of Wisdom, by Leo Tolstoy

Wise Thoughts for Every Day

On God, Love, Spirit,

and Living a Good Life

Leo Tolstoy

Selected and Translated from the Russian

by Peter Sekirin

Arcade Publishing • New York

English-language translation, introduction, and compilation

copyright © 2005, 2011 by Peter Sekirin

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910.

 [Selections. English. 2011] 

Wise thoughts for every day : on god, love, the human spirit, and living a good life / Leo Tolstoy ; selected and translated from the Russian by Peter Sekirin.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-61145-036-1 (alk. paper)

1. Devotional calendars. I. Sekirin, Peter. II.Title.

BV4811.T65213 2011

087--dc22

2011002159

Printed in the United States of America

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my sincere acknowledgments to the following people: my friends Karla Lees, Kim Yates, Phil Hill, and Patrick Parnaby for their help with the initial editing of the manuscript and selection of the wise thoughts; my editor, Cal Barksdale, for his professional advice, expertise, and wisdom; and my wife, Helen, parents,Vera and Vsevolod, and children, Matthew, Marina, George, and Elias for all their inspiration and support.

INTRODUCTION

Tolstoy’s Last Major Work: Its Importance, the History of Its Creation and Publication, and Its Major Message

The Thoughts of Wise Men was Leo Tolstoy’s final work, the one he loved more than all others and considered his most important single contribution to humanity. In it, Tolstoy distilled and presented the spiritual wisdom of many nations, cultures, and historical periods to create an original work, unsurpassed by anything in world literature.As his source, he drew from the world’s sacred texts, major religions, and great philosophical systems and the literary works of more than three hundred of his favorite authors.

Tolstoy devoted the last eight years of his life to this project, which took shape as a trilogy of books that evolved over several editions:

The Thoughts of Wise Men (1903);

A Circle of Reading (1906), first published in English in 1997 by Scribner under the title A Calendar of Wisdom;

Wise Thoughts for Every Day, or For Every Day (1909), recently rediscovered in Russia and now published in English for the first time.

The Thoughts of Wise Men (1903)

The first book contained only one to three thoughts per day, about eight hundred in all, with forty-one authors represented. It was relatively short, and the thoughts were arranged randomly and not thematically linked: they were just a collection of intellectual gems by Tolstoy’s favorite writers.The booklet enjoyed considerable success and went through more than a dozen editions, one every year starting in 1903. It was even published as a desktop gift calendar. Its popularity led Tolstoy to revisit and rethink this project in 1904, with a view to creating a book that would be necessary for everyone, and he spent most of his time and literary energy on it.

A Circle of Reading (1906)

Tolstoy at first set to work revising and enlarging The Thoughts of Wise Men. At the beginning of 1904, he wrote in his diary, "I am busy improving The Thoughts." Several months later, though, it became obvious that he was not merely editing: he was working on the creation of a completely new book, different from The Thoughts in its structure, size, volume, and quality. At the outset,Tolstoy referred to this new project as A New Calendar, or sometimes A Calendar of Wisdom, but he soon began to call it A Circle of Reading. He first mentioned it by this title in his letter to G. Rusanov on September 24, 1904: "During the last days I have been busy: I’m not working on my Calendar anymore but on A Circle of Reading every day."

The thoughts in this new book were organized around daily topics such as love, God, friendship, life, and children, spread throughout the twelve months. The work moved slowly owing to the huge amount of source material. Tolstoy read and reread more than three hundred books while he worked on the second part of the trilogy, and the Calendar grew from three dozen pages to many hundreds. Each entry included five to seven, sometimes more, wise thoughts—over two thousand in total—carefully selected from Tolstoy’s library of more than 22,000 volumes, from the works of over 250 of the greatest thinkers and writers of all time, and, in the case of several hundred thoughts, from fifty different collections of quotations in Russian, French, English, and German.

Every day started and ended with a thought by Tolstoy himself, styled in italics. The writer also added fifty-two weekly readings, which consisted of a short story or a chapter from a novel by one of his favorite writers, among them Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo, and Plato.The book became so large that it was published not as a single volume but as twelve monthly booklets in 1906. It went through numerous editions between 1907 and 1915.

However, this second work of his trilogy lacked to a certain degree coherence and integrity.There was no general structure or message for the whole book, the topics repeated more or less randomly and were not linked to a specific day of the month, the days lacked headings, and even the weekly readings were inconsistent, varying between fiction and nonfiction.

Wise Thoughts for Every Day, or For Every Day (1909)

From 1906 to 1909, Tolstoy became so preoccupied with this project that he decided to produce another, similar book, to be titled The Thoughts of Wise Men for Every Day. The title was eventually shortened to For Every Day.With this work, the writer fully achieved what he intended: For Every Day had a definite structure, with a monthly cycle of repeating themes, and it was more focused, more precise, and at the same time more accessible to a broad readership.

Each day of the year consisted of nine to twelve aphorisms or thoughts. In the previous book, Tolstoy had added another two hundred authors to those cited in the first. However, this time the bulk of the book was comprised of wise thoughts written by Tolstoy himself.Then, Tolstoy came up with an unusual, breakthrough idea: he created thirty topics (God, love, faith, soul, truth, and so forth) to correspond to each day of the month, and, with some variation, repeated the same structure every month.Tolstoy stressed in correspondence to his friend, the literary critic,V. Posse, that this book was different from anything he had ever written because of the scope and type of material.

Tolstoy’s last great project seems to have grown out of his close brush with death late in life. In the spring of 1902, when he was seventy-five, Tolstoy fell seriously ill, first with pneumonia and then with typhoid fever. No antibiotics had been invented at that time, and both diseases were considered potentially fatal. Tolstoy hung precariously between life and death for several months. His survival was little short of miraculous. While he was recuperating in November– December 1902 in the small town of Gaspra, near Yalta in Crimea, he was unable to work in his usual way, so he often met with fellow writers Chekhov, Gorky, and others, and talked about life, death, literature, and the meaning of life. He got into the habit of reading and reflecting on a single nugget of wisdom each day, taken from a wall calendar that hung in his room.The calendar ended on December 1902.

The next month, in January 1903, confronted with the lack of a ready-made subject of meditation, Tolstoy realized that he had developed a useful and rewarding habit.When he had entirely recovered from his illness, he began collecting the thoughts of wise men from his own library for his personal pleasure.

Thus did he gradually embark on a project that would take up almost all of the last eight years of his life, that is, from 1903 to 1910, and would become a trilogy of more than 1,200 pages in length.This work would summarize the writer’s views on life and God, and he would refer to it as much more important than anything he had ever written before.The first idea for this book had actually appeared much earlier, about twenty years before his illness, when Tolstoy wrote in his diary on March 15, 1884: It would be nice to make a circle of reading: Epictetis, Marcus Aurelius, Buddha, Pascal, and the New Testament. And it is necessary for everyone. A year later, he repeated the same thought in a letter to his assistant Chertkov dated June 4–5, 1885:I would like to compile a circle of reading, that is, excerpts from the books that tell us about what a man needs most in his life, and what is good for him. Although his other literary projects preempted this work, he returned to the idea in 1903, after his illnesses and recovery.

Finally, a few remarks about the present publication and continued relevance of Wise Thoughts for Every Day. Tolstoy’s trilogy was immensely popular from the publication of the first volume in 1903 until the revolution in 1917. Then all three volumes were banned by the Soviet regime for almost eighty years because of their religious content. Rediscovered after the fall of the Soviet Union, they have enjoyed a tremendous success in Russia in recent years, with over three editions and 300,000 copies in print. Wise Thoughts for Every Day is the last of the volumes to be rediscovered, and it is being translated into English and published here for the first time.

This book, Tolstoy’s last great work, is as important now, nearly a hundred years after its creation, as it was when it was first published. The depth of Tolstoy’s wisdom, his faith, and his intelligence shine through clearly. His thoughts are the distillation of the best of several thousand years of human experience, and they are as fresh, genuine, and applicable now as they ever were.Tolstoy teaches his readers to ponder, to wonder, to laugh, and most of all, to understand the human condition with clarity and deep sympathy. This is a classic—and timeless—Chicken Soup for Your Soul.

The structure of Wise Thoughts for Every Day is elaborate but also flexible. Each month is divided into four sections—Our Relationship with God, Our Challenges, Our Actions, and Our Spiritual Life—that cover a variety of themes, one for each day. For example, Our Relationship with God begins the month and comprises the themes of faith, soul, one soul in all, God, unification in spirit, and universal love. The next group, Our Challenges, introduces the themes of our sins and temptations, inequality, false science, judgment and punishment, and violence and war. Our Actions is dedicated to the themes of spiritual effort and virtue, thoughts, words and actions, truth and lies, humility, self-sacrifice, prayer, and work. The last section, Our Spiritual Life, includes the themes of living in the present, evil and suffering, death, life after death, happiness, and love. The themes recur from month to month according to this cycle, but the days may vary somewhat and a theme may repeat or be absent in a given month.

For this edition, which is selective, I have chosen the thoughts that seemed the most original and suitable for our time and that were not redundant. In this sort of collection, where Tolstoy considered thoughts from diverse angles, there is inevitably some repetition.

Tolstoy kept his guide to living a good life on his desk during his final years until the very end (he even asked his assistant, V. Chertkov, to bring him the galleys on his deathbed). He made a habit of reading from it to his family and recommended it highly to his friends. Now, in a time of growing spiritual awareness, Tolstoy’s great self-help masterpiece is once again available to provide readers everywhere with inspiration and solace and, as he wished, to help them in their life and work.

Introduction by Leo Tolstoy to For Every Day

This book, The Thoughts of Wise Men for Every Day, is written in the same manner as, and is similar in structure, to my previous book, A Circle of Reading [A Calendar of Wisdom in the English translation]. It consists of a collection of thoughts for each day of the year.

The major difference between this and the previous book is that the new thoughts in this volume are arranged, not at random, as was the case in the previous book, but according to a logical system. From one month to the next, the daily thoughts follow a particular sequence, each one being meaningful in relation to those that preceded it.Thereby, the days are interconnected. Also, each and every month comprises a particular philosophical outlook that can be used to guide our actions.This outlook is illustrated with the thoughts of ancient and present-day thinkers from different nations.

The names of the thinkers—from whom I have borrowed thoughts—are given here. However, many of the thoughts were changed and/or shortened, thus reflecting the ways in which I understood them.The thoughts that are unattributed were written by me.

I hope the readers of this book will experience the same benevolent and uplifting feeling that I experienced while working on its creation and that I continue to feel again and again when I reread it every day.

1908–1910

JANUARY 1

Faith

The law of God involves fulfilling God’s will. Because all people are created equal, the law of God is the same for all of us. Our lives can be good only when we understand the law of God and follow it.

According to an old Jewish saying, A person’s soul is God’s lamp. A person is helpless when God’s lamp is not lit, but becomes strong and free when it is. Of course, this cannot be otherwise, because it is not their own power but God’s.

Although we don’t know what universal goodness is, we do know that we should all follow the law of goodness that exists in both human wisdom and our hearts.

If people believe that they can please God through rituals and prayers alone — not by deeds — then they have lied to both God and themselves.

JANUARY 2

Soul

What do I call my inner self? It is my soul, which lives in and is connected to my body. We all pass through particular stages as we age. First, we are infants, then children, then men or women, and finally we grow old. But during this time, our inner self remains the same. This inner self is our soul.

Understanding ourselves involves realizing that life is not within the body but within the soul.

Iron is stronger than stone, stone is stronger than wood, wood is stronger than water, and water is stronger than air. But