October 26

For moral life, the importance of a deed is measured not by its material significance and its possible consequences, but only by the degree of good effort.

1

Most people, wishing to improve their lives, aspire more to perform something difficult and extraordinary than to purify their desires and reject self-gratification in the ordinary obligations of their situation. And meanwhile, the latter is much more important than the former.

— After Fénelon

2

The one who does not do what he feels he should do only because it seems to him too small is deceiving himself. It is not because it is too small that he is not doing it, but because it is too great for him.

— Pezey

3

You do not always have to finish what you have started, but neither should you avoid the work.

The one who has entrusted you with the task is reliable.

— The Talmud

4

If a human being does not consider himself called to fulfill a task, a mission, he cannot be enlightened.

— Chinese wisdom

5

A human being discovers himself not through thought, but through action. Only through his efforts to perform his duty does he learn his own worth.

— Goethe

6

To transfer one’s self from the material to the spiritual means to consciously desire only the spiritual. My body may desire the material, but my soul does not, but it cannot leave the body, in the same way that my wishing that gravity would not pull me down to earth would do nothing to help me escape it, no matter what I do or where I go. And just as I keep moving, walking and jumping despite the force of gravity pulling me down to earth in my material life, the same thing is happening with my soul and body. The body is constantly pulling me towards it, and I am separating myself away from it, or even making use of it, and I lead a spiritual life. That is what constitutes my true life.

Nothing harms moral self-perfection as much as feeling oneself above tasks that are considered trifling in a worldly sense.