Below are quotes that resonate, from Leo Tolstoy’s ‘A Calendar Of Wisdom’.
[1]
It is better to know a little of what is really good and worthwhile than a lot of what is mediocre and unnecessary. – Tolstoy
[2]
Be wary lest by reading too many writers and too many different kinds of books your brain becomes confused and addled. If you wish to extract something useful from your reading, you should feed your mind only with those writers of undoubted worth. Read therefore only those books which have been recognized as unquestionably good. And if you should ever feel the urge to turn to any other sort of book, always remember to return to the first kind. – Seneca, MLL
[3]
Read the best book first, or you may bot have a chance to read them at all. – Thoreau, ‘A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers’
[4]
One of the most primitive superstitions is the belief held by the majority of so-called scientists that it is possible to live without faith. – Tolstoy
[5]
In a building full of people, someone shouts “fire!”, and everyone starts running about, and scores, hundreds of people are killed. Such is the harm that can clearly arise from the spoken word. But we can do just as much harm when we are not aware of those people who suffer as a result of what we have said. – Tolstoy
[6]
If you feel angry about something, count up to ten before doing or saying anything. If you still feel angry, count up to a hundred, and then, if necessary, up to a thousand. – After Thomas Jefferson, ‘Letter to his so Thomas Jefferson Smith in 1825’
[7]
A saintly person does not possess an inflexible heart. He adapts his heart so that it can respond to other people’s hearts. He responds to a virtuous person as if he were a virtuous person, and to a sinner as if he were capable of becoming virtuous. – Eastern proverb
[8]
The Buddha said that the man who is beginning to live for the sake of his ‘soul’ is like the man who takes a light into a dark house; the darkness immediately dissolves. All you need to do is to persist in this way of life and you will become completely enlightened. – Tolstoy
[9]
It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know, I do not get a hair’s breadth nearer to any natural object so long as I presume I have an introduction to it from some learned man. To conceive of it with a total apprehension I must for the thousandth time approach it as something totally strange. – Thoreau, ‘Journal’
[10]
In order to bring someone up to be fit for the future, you must have a completely perfect person in mind. – Tolstoy