#19: Wisdom Quotes
Below are quotes that resonate, from Leo Tolstoy’s ‘A Calendar Of Wisdom’.
[1]
Compassion for all living creatures is the surest and most reliable guarantee of truly moral behaviour. Those who are truly compassionate will very probably never offend or insult anyone, will never cause anyone pain, will never call anyone to account, will forgive everyone, so that all their actions will bear the stamp of justice and love for others. Think of your reaction if someone were to say “He is a virtuous person, but he doesn’t know pity”, or “He is an unfair and nasty individual, but he is very compassionate”, and you will sense the contradiction. – Schopenhauer, PaP
[2]
Compassion towards animals is so closely bound up with the attribute of goodness in humans that it is possible to state with certainty that anybody who shows cruelty towards animals cannot be a good person. – Schopenhauer, PaP
[3]
Whenever you feel pain at the sight of another creature suffering, don’t give in to your first instinct to look away, or to run away, but, on the contrary, run over to the suffering creature and look for ways in which you can help it. – Tolstoy
[4]
Keep yourself hidden from the unfortunate person you are helping. Let him delight in the good deed, without knowing the name of his benefactor. – From Pious Thoughts
[5]
Let what you do be governed by you yourself and not by events. Don’t be one of those people whose only aim is to look for rewards. Be attentive, do your duty, and stop thinking about the consequences of what you do, so that it’s the same whether the outcome for you is pleasant or unpleasant. – Bhagavata
[6]
The person who knows the law but does not obey it is like the person who ploughs but never sows. – Eastern wisdom
[7]
We become angry with the circumstances of our life: they make us sad and we want to change them. And yet all possible circumstances of our life are nothing other than indications of the various ways we should react to them.
If you are fit and well, then you should make every effort to devote your strengths to serving others; if you are sick, you should try to make sure that your illness does not inconvenience others.
If you are rich, then you should do everything you can to rid yourself of your wealth; if you are poor, try not to ask anything of other people.
If you have been offended, make an effort to love those who have offended you; and if you have offended someone else, do everything you can to negate the wrong that you have committed. – Tolstoy
[8]
Morals are the direction of the will on universal ends. He is immoral who is acting on any private end. He is moral – … whose aim or motive may become a universal rule, binding on all intelligent beings…We affirm that in all men is this majestic perception and command; that is the presence of the Eternal in each perishing man. – Emerson, ‘Lectures and Biographical Sketches’
[9]
Everybody, from emperor to beggar, must above all concern themselves with self-improvement, since only that can confer blessing on us all. – Confucius
[10]
‘My good deed was repaid with evil.’ But if you love the person for whom you did the good deed, you have already had your reward in the blessing that you have received by loving someone. So the good you do someone, in loving that person, you always do to yourself.- Tolstoy