Leo Tolstoy
Translated by
Dmitry Fadeyev
Death does not destroy life, it only transforms it.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Do not squander your life in doubts and fears. Surrender to the work of life and be certain that performing the duties of the present hour well is the best preparation for the hours and ages to follow it.
For our present state, the future will always be an illusion. What matters is not the length of a life, but its depth. The point is not to prolong life, but to withdraw our soul from time, which is what every great deed of the soul does; when we live a full life, we do not question ourselves about time.
Jesus did not explain anything about eternal life, but his influence took people out of time, and they felt themselves eternal.
— Emerson
The house in which a person lives can be demolished and destroyed; but the dwelling place that the soul builds for itself from pure thoughts and good deeds is not afraid even of eternity, and nothing can harm the one who lives in it.
— Lucy Mallory
It is impossible to believe in a future life, but it is possible not only to believe but also to know that the present life is indestructible.
Belief in immortality is acquired not through reasoning, but through life.
It is not arguments that convince us of the necessity of a future life, but the fact that when one walks in life side by side with a human being, and suddenly this human being disappears into nothingness, you yourself stop before this abyss and gaze into it.
The degree of fear that we experience before death indicates the extent to which we truly understand life.
The less we fear death, the freer and calmer we are and the more aware we are of the power of our soul and the joy of life. When we are completely liberated from this fear, when we are fully conscious of the unity of this life with eternal truth, we should experience total, inviolable tranquility.
The consciousness of immortality is natural to the human soul. Only the evil that we do, to the extent that we do it, deprives us of it.