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

by Leo Tolstoy, Peter Sekirin (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780684837932
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	10/14/1997
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	59,555
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.10(d)

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.

Date of Birth:

September 9, 1828

Date of Death:

November 20, 1910

Place of Birth:

Tula Province, Russia

Place of Death:

Astapovo, Russia

Education:

Privately educated by French and German tutors; attended the University of Kazan, 1844-47

Read an Excerpt

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

Editorial Reviews

Sarah Ban Breathnach SIMPLE ABUNDANCE All writers believe that there is one book that they and they alone were born to bring into the world. The great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy believed his was A Calendar of Wisdom. Here is a profound and passionate collaboration between the Great Creator and one of history's consummate artists. That we should be able to reach through the portcullis of the past to share the private observations that inspired Leo Tolstoy to discover the sacred in the ordinary a century after he gleaned them from the world's sacred texts seems to me to be nothing less than miraculous. You'll feel as if a devoted spiritual guide, with a wink in his eye, has secretly helped you circumvent the laws of heaven and earth in order to nourish and sustain you on your own personal journey to wholeness. Savoring each day's passage fills me with gratitude, delight, and often awe. Here is a book to be cherished.

From the Publisher