Thoughts for Every Day

During L. N. Tolstoy’s severe illness in January 1903, when his life hung by a thread and he couldn’t devote himself to his usual work, he still found the strength to read the Gospels and, by habit—every day—opening the calendar kept in his bedroom, he reread the sayings collected there from various great people. But the previous year’s calendar came to an end, and since there was nothing else at hand, Lev Nikolayevich wanted to make extracts for each day by himself—from different thinkers. Every day, while in bed, as far as his strength allowed, he made these selections, and the result of this work is the book now offered to the readers.

Here, you will find selected thoughts from the following writers and sages: Epictetus, Diogenes, Marcus Aurelius, Socrates, Confucius, the Buddha, Lao-tzu, Aristotle, Plato, St. Augustine—and more modern thinkers: Pascal, Rousseau, Spinoza, Luther, Vauvenargues, Kant, Schiller, Bentham, Schopenhauer, Voltaire, Klinger, Thackeray, Dostoevsky, Vilmen, Ruskin, and others.