From Russia to India
In the East, and especially in India, Tolstoy’s beliefs seem still to be very much alive. Gandhi regarded himself as a humble follower, and his tremendously effective civil disobedience campaign stemmed in large measure from…
Tag: Leo Tolstoy
All-time Greats
By the novel of ideas I mean realist fiction, focused on the complexities of human psychology and the social conditions peculiar to a specific time and place, that tests theories by examining the sources of…
Take Your Pick
What is the essence of Christ’s ministry? He teaches men “not to commit stupidities.” All of Tolstoy’s brutal empiricism and aristocratic impatience resound in that extraordinary answer. The Dostoevskyan Christ, on the contrary, teaches men…
Today’s One-Liner (#318)
When the work of art invades our consciousness, something within us catches flame. –George Steiner, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism, 45
Today’s One-Liner (#301)
Tolstoy and other classic writers deemed it their duty to curse prison, but Solzhenitsyn, who served time in conditions those writers could not have begun to imagine, can “say without hesitation: ‘Bless you, prison, for…
A Personal Bible
Tolstoy wrote little in 1910 but considerable effort went into completing For Every Day, the compilation of quotations from great authors arranged so as to illustrate the development of his own philosophy of life, a…
Today’s One-Liner (#299)
The distance we have gone is less important than the direction in which we are going. –Leo Tolstoy, Spiritual Writings, edited Charles E. Moore
Today’s One-Liner (#219)
If we would only avoid deceiving ourselves, we would find out what to do, where to go, how to live, and do so with clarity. –Leo Tolstoy, Spiritual Writings, edited Charles E. Moore
So Long Ago and So Modern
St. Francis anticipated all that is most liberal and sympathetic in the modern mood; the love of nature; the love of animals; the sense of social compassion; the sense of the spiritual dangers of prosperity…
Bearing Fruit
Russian literature might almost be described as the literature of conversion. (We noted some famous instances in Chapter 3.) Time and again, suffering leads to awareness of Truth or apprehension of God. Tolstoy’s autobiographical Confession recounts…