"PAYING THE PRICE" SETS THE PRICE / WORTH / VALUE

"PAYING THE PRICE" SETS THE PRICE / WORTH / VALUE.

Think about the importance of what you do, and do not do. Correctly, this principal underlies "free markets." The price, the value is what people pay! Everything else is illusory!

When we pay lip service - that sets the price.

When we "pay the price" with our lives like Beko, King, Gandhi, Teresa, Diane Wilson and others have done - THAT SETS THE PRICE.

OPINION LEADERS, PIONEERS SET THE PRICE THAT OTHERS THEN BEGIN TO PAY!

BROTHERLINESS = PAYING "THE PRICE" FOR OTHERS

BROTHERLINESS = PAYING "THE PRICE" FOR THE NEEDS OF OTHERS OR FOR THE MODEST AND NECESSARY NEEDS OF OURSELVES.

This is a monumentally important discovery for me. Is there anything else that needs to be said?

VIOLENCE = EXTORTING "THE PRICE" FROM OTHERS

VIOLENCE = EXTORTING "THE PRICE" FOR WHAT WE WANT FROM OTHERS.

This is a monumentally important discovery for me. Is there anything else that needs to be said?

"GOD BLESS YOU" is the salutation Start receives now

There is little that I have done in many months that is not just "surrender" to the Almighty as best I am able. This includes the tattoo on my forehead. Divine Inspiration is how I experience it.

Almost always when I encounter people face to face, if they engage me, somewhere in the dialog is the saluation, "God bless you." 99% of the time. It seems genuine. It seems deep. It seems comfortable. It seems spontaneous.

Hmmm. It seems that more than before I bring a sacred sense of God, of the Almighty to their Spirit. Hmmm. That is the entirety of what I want to do!

Thanks Father.

Quantum

Most of what Saves us is not just a little bit better. It is a quantum leap better, more pure, more of the Almighty:

• Gandhi
• Teresa
• Diane Wilson
• ML King
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• Steve Beko
• Etc.

In the most sacred of essays, Rabbi Abraham J. Heschel gives us a hint to this phenomenon:

"God will return to us when we shall be willing to let Him in into our banks and factories, into our Congress and clubs, into our courts and investigating committees, into our homes and theaters. For God is everywhere or nowhere, the Father of all men or no man, concerned about everything or nothing."

Tolstoy's life of DIVERSIONS was his DEATH

By his early 50's Tolstoy had written all his Novels, made a fortune, and lost the will to live.

Then he did his own translation of the Gospel and found 40 more years of life in poverty serving "the least of these my family."

HUMANKIND'S GREATS ESCAPED ENCULTURATION

Hmmm. Did we get our Greats from enculturating them: Jesus, Gandhi, King, Diane Wilson, William Thomas, Davinci, St. Francis, Teresa of Calcutta, Motzart....

• In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards. Mark Twain
• School-days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn't take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not. H. L. Mencken
• From my expereince of hundreds of children, I know that they have perhaps a finer sense of honour than you or I have. The greatest lessons in life, if we would but stoop and humble ourselves, we would learn not from grown-up learned men, but from the so-called ignorant children. MK Gandhi
• To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society. Theodore Roosevelt
• A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education he may steal the whole railroad.
  Theodore Roosevelt
• Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russell
• I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. Mark Twain
• The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education. Albert Einstein
• My education was interrupted only by my schooling. Winston Churchill
• "Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education." Bertrand Russell
• "We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought." Bertrand Russell
• Your learning is useless to you till you have lost your text-books, burnt your lecture notes, and forgotten the minutiae which you learnt by heart for the examination. Alfred North Whitehead
• Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school. William Shakespeare
• I think my deepest criticism of the educational system at that period [junior high and high school], and that also applies to other periods, is that it's all based upon a distrust of the student. Don't trust him to follow his own leads; guide him; tell him what to do; tell him what he should think; tell him what he should learn. Consequently at the very age when he should be developing adult characteristics of choice and decision making, when he should be trusted on some of those things, trusted to make mistakes and to learn from those mistakes, he is, instead, regimented and shoved into a curriculum, whether it fits him or not. Carl Rogers
• He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on. Benjamin Franklin
• College isn't the place to go for ideas. Helen Keller
• If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of delightful labour, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor. Ralf Waldo Emerson
• You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so, you learn to love by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves. St. Francis
• A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. George Bernard Shaw
• It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry. Albert Einstein
• It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry. Albert Einstein
• The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Alvin Toffler
• Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands. Anne Frank
• Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction. Annie Sullivan
• If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning. Carl Rogers

THE INFANT IS "CREATION" AND "CREATOR"

Why are we so overwhelmingly drawn to the infant? THE INFANT IS "CREATION" AND "CREATOR." The infant is the closest we will ever come to encountering entirely The Almighty, The Creator.

We are neotenous creatures, among the only such creatures on the planet. Neotenous: Retention of juvenile characteristics in the adults of a species.

We are to remain close approximations of the Creator. Jesus died to try to make this True for us.

Life happens at the "GROWTH TIP"

Growth tip:

• Where it happens in plants
• An extremely small part of the "whole"
• Presumably "painful"
• "Alien" from the mass
• "Lonely"
• Essential to life
• "Leading"

JESUS FOLLOWERS FOLLOW THE "ALMIGHTY"

For that matter, The Almighty's followers follow the Almighty - Truth, Love, Life; just like Newton followed, was irrestably drawn by Gravity. No?

This explains all the prophets, Jesus, the Disciples, the Apostles.

The world continues to burn because we look beyond this simple truth for magic and mysticism so we can escape the implications:

We are all one Family; no double standards; Be Brotherly; GET ON WITH IT.

!!!!!! THE RICH YOUNG MAN IS ME AND YOU !!!!!!

You can forget everything else on this site if you want to. Don't even bother with it.

Just ponder this, and face the implications:

!!!!!! THE RICH YOUNG MAN IS ME AND YOU !!!!!!

?????Is this OK?????

Mark Chapter 10 "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" 18 Jesus answered him, "Why do you call me good? 3 No one is good but God alone. 19 You know the commandments: 'You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother.'" 20
He replied and said to him, "Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth." 21 Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, "You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to (the) poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." 22 At that statement his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

Matthew 19 "Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?" 17 He answered him, "Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good. 13 If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments." 18 14 He asked him, "Which ones?" And Jesus replied, " 'You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; 19 honor your father and your mother'; and 'you shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" 20 15 The young man said to him, "All of these I have observed. What do I still lack?" 21 Jesus said to him, "If you wish to be perfect, 16 go, sell what you have and give to (the) poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." 22 When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions. 23 17 Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

BLESSED UNREST

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.... You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."
~ Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille

"More!," as my friend says.

"All, Everything!," as the Almighty says.

"Groundhod Day" movie. "Life" looks like this.

I've admired this movie for so long, it is amazing to me that just within the last few days did it hit me, why!

Life, the Almighty, looks like this movie looks. Every day, every day Life, The Almighty improves, learns, grows.

Blessed Unrest!

NOT "COMMANDMENT!" JESUS GAVE THE "SOLUTION!!!"

Did Einstein give us "Commandments?"

Did Lister give us "Commandments?"

No, they gave us Solutions TO LIVE BY!

JESUS GAVE US THE SOLUTION TO LIFE! My goodness, how did I not see this until now. Tolstoy articulated exactly this in "The Kingdom of God is Within You." The following is NOT Tolstoy's articulation:

JESUS SOLUTION: WE ARE ALL ONE FAMILY. NO MORE DOUBLE STANDARDS. GET ON WITH IT!

1. Love God (we have one Father)
2. Love your neighbor as yourself (everyone is your neighbor, everyone is your brother; BE BROTHERLY. PERIOD.)

So, what do we get with this solution? With certainty, THE KINGDOM: E=MCsqd. "THY KINGDOM COMES AS THY WILL IS DONE..."

THE "PRICE" IS: EVERYTHING & NOTHING

Paying the Price is the central issue of our age. We learn to do so, we learn to do what needs to be done, what our Hearts would have us do, or technology and weapons will reduce all life on earth to hell. !!!!!! THE RICH YOUNG MAN IS ME AND YOU !!!!!!

Like "sacrifice," "suffer," "courage..." "PRICE," or "paying the price" is profoundly different for the onlooker than for the actor. The one "paying the price" if doing so out of Love, feels Joy centrally, and any sensation of "paying" is peripheral. Yes this is absolutely true in the extreme, for Jesus on the Cross, for Ganhi close to death in a Hunger Strike. "Don't you know I am never so Joyful as when I am suffering for my people," asked Gandhi? [paraphrase]

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy." George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), Man and Superman, Epistle Dedicatory

"A CHRISTIAN" VS "CHRISTIAN"

All the difference in the world:

• Cancer vs Health
• Death vs Life
• Hell vs Heaven
• Admiring & Exploiting Jesus vs Following & Serving Jesus
• Flesh & Head vs Heart / Spirit
• Crucifixion vs Resurrection

This is not a matter of malice, or even of choice. "Many are called but few are chosen." This is really, really cruel.

THE "PEARL" / "TREASURE" OF JESUS

Life.

I have just now glimpsed this!

I cannot prove this to you, but if you want, I can show you.

You are young parents in the first minutes of holding your first newborn. What is more valuable?

Now, imagine a Heart as expansive of that of Jesus, Teresa, Gandhi, King or any other uncrippled adult human. What is the "Pearl," the "Treasure" for which you would sell everything? The "Pearl," the "Treasure" for which you would sell everything is EVERY SINGLE, ANY SINGLE HUMAN LIFE.

WITHIN EVERY LIFE IS CREATION, AND THE CREATOR - THE ALMIGHTY. INFINITE WORTH. INFINITE VALUE. INFINITE BEAUTY AND WONDER.

Separating ALMIGHTY TRUTH from manmade "truth"

Who are you? What are you to become?

What if you and anyone on earth have never encountered a "Golden Retriever" baby puppy; or a tulip bulb?

How would you go about discovering what it was, its "nature?"

• Patience
• Respect
• Honesty
• HUMILITY
• Rigor....

The real point is that YOU would KNOW THAT IT HAD A "NATURE," unlike a piece of clay or Iron Ore that, although these two have a nature, they are inanimate and "invite" manipulation and forming. Alive "nature" invites discovery and nurture. Yes?

Human Beings provide an infinitely more complex problem due to their practically limitless capacity to be enculturated. Yet, imagine that you are a species from a distant planet, extremely "humane," and you encounter a human infant. What do you do? The above list, right?

The point is, humans have a "nature." By Jesus time we had lost much of our sense of this. With Judaism we were living as though we were weak clay that needed constant force to assume a shape pleasing to the Almighty.

Jesus saw the Truth. Our nature is Humane / Brotherly / Universal Family / Compassionate / Loving. He died to have us re-envision ourselves and to re-envision our relationships. He died to Lead us to Lead others to recreate ourselves and our culture - to Heaven on Earth.

We have been crucifying him ever since. Jesus has company that in more recent years have arrived at much his conclusions: Carl Rogers, Alfred Adler, Pitirim Sorokin, Victor Frankl, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, Abraham Maslow. Those who are evidence that Jesus was correct in seeing the full "health" of a human include Gandhi, Teresa, King, Eleanor Roosevelt, Abe Lincoln, Dietrich Bonhoeffer....

EVERY "BROTHERLINESS" IS A "BRICK" IN THE KINGDOM

Wow. This was a much needed bit of encouragement last week.

This was important clarity. We need Heaven constructed and a bridge for all of us to get to Heaven to be constructed. This is a HUGE JOB!

But make no mistake, think about your own experience.

What is YOUR bridge toward Heaven so far. Is it no made up of acts of Love / courage / Heroism / Altruism ... bricks made and laid by people directly and indirectly in your life?

• Mom
• Dad
• Sister
• Brother
• Teacher
• Historic characters
• Strangers
• Fiction characters
• Jesus
• etc
• etc

Every act of Love / Family / Brotherliness / Kindness / Humanity / Altrusm... is a brick.

Take heart! Get on with it!

JESUS SAID THERE WOULD BE A "PRICE TO PAY"

So far for me it has been exactly as Jesus said:

MarkChapter 8 "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. 35 For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel 9 will save it. 36 What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? 37 What could one give in exchange for his life? 38 Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this faithless and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."

Mark Chapter 10 28 Peter began to say to him, "We have given up everything and followed you." 29 Jesus said, "Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel 30
who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.

Matthew 19 29 And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life.

ALTERNATIVE LANGUAGE FOR "NONVIOLENCE"

Who could be satisfied with the term "nonviolence?" It so defines itself in terms of what it wants NOT to be. The reverse should be true.

Potential alternatives include:

1. Militant Brotherliness
2. Militant Family
3. Militant Loving
4. Militant Love
5. Militant Nonviolence
6. Militant PeaceMaking
7. Brotherliness
8. Revolutionary Brotherliness
9. Tough Brotherliness
10. Tough Loving
11. Universal Family
12. PeaceMaking
13. ?
14. ?

Thine is the... "Glory"

Oh my. What a tragedy that people like me were never taught how to be prayed by this prayer, the Our Father! Year after recent year I find this a perfect prayer, the perfect prayer for developing me as a disciple, for making me Christian.

My experience with the last three phrases is the newest. I expect to spend many hundreds of hours, if granted by the Almighty, being pondered by "For Thine is the Glory." In my experience so far, what is as glorious as:

• The Love that your caregivers provided as you grew
• The Love of your best teachers
• The self-sacrificial Love of histories Heroes
• The way Truth wins out ... in the end
• The wonder of Life in an infant
• Etc
• Etc

Thine is the "Kingdom"

Oh my. What a tragedy that people like me were never taught how to be prayed by this prayer, the Our Father! Year after recent year I find this a perfect prayer, the perfect prayer for developing me as a disciple, for making me Christian.

My experience with the last three phrases is the newest. I expect to spend many hundreds of hours, if granted by the Almighty, being pondered by "For Thine is the Kingdom." In my experience so far:

• Yes! Thine is the ONLY KINGDOM in which anyone that had experienced it would want to live!
• Thy Kingdom is the only one with the power of the Almighty!
• Thy Kingdom is the one WITH the Almighty - that you can reside with Love, Life, Truth.
• Thy Kingdom is the one that is Heaven on Earth, including for those most dear to us.

It is really important to intimately envision the Kingdom:

1. To know where we need to be.
2. To know where we WANT to be.
3. To know what to try and build.
4. To know where we need to lead others.
5. For the motivation that comes from seeing the prize.

Thine is the... "Power"

Oh my. What a tragedy that people like me were never taught how to be prayed by this prayer, the Our Father! Year after recent year I find this a perfect prayer, the perfect prayer for developing me as a disciple, for making me Christian.

My experience with the last three phrases is the newest. I expect to spend many hundreds of hours, if granted by the Almighty, being pondered by "For Thine is the Power," THE ALMIGHTY! In my experience so far:

• Napoleon: "Do you know what astonished me most in the world? The inability of force to create anything. In the long run, the sword is always beaten by the spirit."
• Not Gandhi, but he as an instrument of the Almighty.
• Not King, but he as an instrument of the Almighty.
• Not Jesus, but the Almighty Power for two hundred years, and vague recollection that will not fully die for 2000 years.
• Etc.

What has brought "Heaven" into your life?

Have you any glimpses into heaven? Of course you do.

For me the examples are endless, however I wish there were a million times as many:

1. My father's joy at given me a motor bike, something he never could have afforded as a child;
2. Bev writing me of her love after years of putting up with me;
3. Dicken's writing - "A Christmas Carol," etc.
4. The book "Endurance" as a child,
5. The movie "Captains Courageous" as a child,
6. My sister Marcia's undying love and kindness to me as a child,
7. The million things my mom did for us kids,
8. Soldiers giving their lives for us,
9. Gandhi's example,
10. JESUS' EXAMPLE,
11. Msgr. Ryan at the Catholic Church when I was little - his unending warmth and kindness,
12. Etc.
13. Etc......

Every one of these is a brick toward the Kingdom!!!!!!!!

Every kindness we do is a brick toward the Kingdom!!!!!!

Obstructions to "paying the price" for Heaven on Earth

1. MODEL-POOR / EXAMPLE-POOR ENVIRONMENT. Imagine a near perfect community as probably existed in certain American Indian tribes and among the early Christians. Someone in such a tribe would require much, much imagination to Err / Sin.
2. TEMPTATION-RICH ENVIRONMENTS. Western, free-market, consumer capitalism INTENDS TO BE THE MOST TEMPTATION-RICH ENVIRONMENT EVER CONCEIVED!!!!!!!!!!
3. PERVERSION / POLUTION / DISGUISE / DISTORTION / MUTILATION OF JESUS "GOSPEL" AS SUCCESSFULLY AND TOTALLY ACHIEVED BY THE "CHURCH" FOR 1800 YEARS!!!!!!!
4. LACK OF PRACTICE AND EXPERIENCE.

Darfur Vigil Goal: Post-it Note Darfuries to the Hearts

As what is written in the title of this post came to me in the last two weeks it has been enormously useful to me staying on the path, Joyful, and Serving out of Solidarity from my Soul.

I think that is an almost perfect example of what the life of a Disciple does: Works to connect "the least of these my family" to the Hearts of all people - to "Save" them from thinking about themselves and "their family."

In front of the Sudan Embassy I am trying to live my life in such a way as to post-it note Darfuries to the Hearts of those that pass by every day. I have no doubt that to some degree this is happening.

The "Our Father" saved me again, and again...

My early May traumatic divergence from the "Path" has been written of extensively in following posts. "PAY ATTENTION" LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT. Guidance for my young friends, of every age. I've neglected there to mention that the "OUR FATHER..." has once again been instrumental in regaining the Path despite great odds.

No, I do not mean "reciting" the Our Father for some "magic" effect. I mean having the "OUR FATHER..." work my nervous system for hours, to hammer me back into shape, back into a Follower, a Disciple.

Walking the path: weed or cultivate? WEED BARRIER

Where are we best to focus our time?

1. WEED: Do I spend my time finding my Errors and working on them?
2. CULTIVATE: Do I spend my time growing within myself Love-in-Action for "the least of these my family?"

Gandhi seemed to say, WEED. Gandhi was obsessed with finding the errors in his life and weeding them out.

Gandhi seemed to say, CULTIVATE. TRUTH IS GOD. Gandhi relentlessly pursued Truth.

Jesus said CULTIVATE! No? The religion He replaced was Judaism which was obsessed with "laws" that were for the minute dealing with weeds. Jesus said No! CULTIVATE. "Follow me." Just Do It!

Both Weeding and Cultivation are necessary, but the emphasis, the strong emphasis needs to be on CULTIVATE, in my experience and practice. Weeding is too much of a "Brain," "Thinking" function. We need to stop "Thinking" and Start Loving. The Heart is the only thing strong enough, wise enough, and visionary enough to get us to Heaven.

The best defense is a good offense: "Love thy neighbor as thyself." "Do unto others ALL that you would have them do unto you.? "As you do unto the least of these my family you do unto me."

JESUS' TWO SOLUTIONS ARE "CULTIVATE:"

1. "Love [the Almighty - Truth, Love, Life] with your whole Heart, your whole soul, and your whole mind."
2. "You shall love your neighbor ["the least of these my family"] as yourself."

Or, WEED BARRIER!!?!??!!!!!!!!

Leo Tolstoy Quotations

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.

All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

All surrounding interests, such as the peace and safety of my family, my property, and myself were based on the law that was rejected by Christ – on the law of a ‘tooth for a tooth.’

All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.

All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.

All His first disciples obeyed the same law of the non-resistance of evil [to not return evil for evil], and passed their lives in disability and persecution.

And all people live, Not by reason of any care they have for themselves, But by the love for them that is in other people.

And I understood from where my error arose. It arose from my professing Christ in words and denying Him in deed.

And Levin, a happy father and a man in perfect health, was several times so near suicide that he hid the cord, lest he be tempted to hang himself, and was afraid to go out with his gun, for fear of shooting himself. But Levin did not shoot himself, and did not hang himself; he went on living.

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.

Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.

Boredom: the desire for desires.

But the peasants - how do the peasants die?

Christ does not require us to turn the other cheek, and to give away our cloak, in order to make us suffer; but He teaches us not to resist evil [to not return evil for evil], and warns us that doing so may involve personal suffering. Does a father, on seeing his son set out on a long journey, tell him to pass sleepless nights, to eat little, to get wet through, or to freeze? Will he not rather say to him, ‘Go, and if on the road you are cold or hungry, do not be discouraged but go on’?

‘Do not resist evil’ means never to resist evil, i.e., never offer violence to anyone. If a man reviles you, do not revile him in return; suffer, but do no violence.

Ecclesiastical teachers told me that the doctrine of Christ was divine, but that its observance was impossible on account of the weakness of human nature.

Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live.

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

He never chooses an opinion; he just wears whatever happens to be in style.

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.

Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.

I did not carry out that teaching in deed [to not return evil for evil], for I admitted and respected the unchristian institutions that surrounded me.

I did not see that it was impossible to admit the Godhead of Christ – the basis of whose teaching is non-resistance of evil – and, at the same time, to work consciously and calmly for the institutions of property, courts of law, kingdoms, the army, and so on.

I imbibed such a notion of the practical impossibility of following the divine doctrine gradually and almost imperceptibly. I was so accustomed to it, it coincided so well with all my animal feelings, that I had never observed the contradiction in which I lived.

I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.

I was taught from my childhood that Christ is God and that His teaching is divine and authoritative; while, on the other hand, I was also told to respect those institutions that, by means of violence, secured my safety from evil; I was taught to honor those institutions as being sacred. I was taught to resist evil; and it was instilled into me that it was humiliating and dishonorable to submit to evil and to suffer from it; and that it was praiseworthy to resist evil. I was taught to condemn and to execute. I was taught to make war, i.e., to resist evil by murder. The army, a member of which I was, was called a ‘Christ-loving’[1] army, and the Church consecrated its mission. I was taught to resist an offender by violence and to avenge a private insult, or one against my native land, by violence. All this was never regarded as wrong, but, on the contrary, I was told that it was perfectly right and in no way contrary to Christ’s doctrine.

If a man were to set all the faculties of his mind to the annulling of a given law, what more forcible argument could he use for its suppression than that it was an impracticable law, and that the legislator’s own opinion of it was that it could not be kept without supernatural aid? And yet, this was exactly what I had thought about the commandment ‘not to resist evil.’ I tried to remember when and how the strange idea had first come into my mind, that the doctrine of Christ was divine in authority but impossible in practice. On reviewing my past life, I discovered that this idea had never been transmitted to me in all its nakedness, for then it would have repelled me; but that I had imperceptibly imbibed it from my earliest childhood, and that the associations of my life had confirmed some strange error.

If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.

If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.

If you want to be happy, be.

If you deal carelessly with bees you will injure them,and will yourself be injured. And so with men. It cannot be otherwise, because natural love is the fundamental law of human life.

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.

It did not then occur to me, as it does now, that it would be much simpler to regulate our lives according to the doctrine of Christ; and then, if courts of law, executions, and war were found to be indispensably necessary for our welfare, we might pray to have them too.

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

It was only after losing all faith in the explanations of learned theology and criticism, and after laying them all aside in obedience to the words of Christ (Mark 10:15), that I began to understand what had until then seemed incomprehensible to me. It was not by deep thought, or by skillfully comparing or commenting on the texts of the gospel, that I came to understand the doctrine. On the contrary, all grew clear to me for the very reason that I had ceased to rest on mere interpretations.

Judgment sins by punishing for crime, and all judgment is annihilated by the law of God – mercy.

Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.

Love is invincible.

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.

Love is the unity of souls

Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

My faith in these ‘toga,’ in these empty idols, hid the truth from my eyes. In my way to Him these ‘toga,’ which I did not have the strength to renounce, stood before me, obscuring His light.

Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.

Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself.

The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.

The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God.

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.

The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people.

The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits.

The law of God - mercy.

The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgment and profession of the truth by each one of us.

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.

The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people.

There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.

Truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth.

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.

War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it.

We lost because we told ourselves we lost.

We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening.

We were taught that it was possible to be a Christian without fulfilling His law not to resist evil.

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.

What an immense mass of evil must result... from allowing men to assume the right of anticipating what may happen.

Why should Christ have given to us such clear and good precepts, applicable to us all, if He knew beforehand that the keeping of them was impossible by man in his own unaided strength?

Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.