Leo Tolstoy
Circle of Reading
Translated by Dmitry Fadeyev

March 31

To repent means to see the full extent of your immorality, your weakness. Repentance is a censure of all that is bad in you, a purification of the soul and its preparation to accept the good.

1

If a good person does not acknowledge his mistakes and instead always tries to justify himself, then very soon he will turn from a good person into a very bad one.

2

If you did something that deserves censure, hasten to acknowledge it yourself.

3

Nothing softens a heart like the recognition of your own guilt, and nothing hardens it like the desire to always be right.

— After the Talmud

4

Even if a person feels guilt in his heart before God but does not admit his guilt before other people or himself, then such a person will always be ready to blame others, especially those before whom he is guilty.

5

A good person is someone who remembers his sins and forgets what is good about him, and, conversely, an evil one is someone who remembers what is good about him and forgets his sins.

It is easy to forgive others when you do not forgive yourself.

— The Talmud

6

The one who has covered his past evil deeds with the good shines in this dark world like the moon on a cloudy night.

— The Dhammapada

7

It is good to repent of your sins when you still have strength.

To repent means to purify your soul and to prepare for the good life, which is why it is good to repent while there is still vitality in a human being. Oil should be added while the lamp is still burning.

— After the Talmud


As long as a human being remains human, he has always been and always will be conscious of his finitude amid the infinite world and his sinfulness, i.e. his not doing all that he could and should have done, but did not.