I read constantly, practically every genre, from chick-lit to classics, from cookbooks to philosophy, from Carlos Castaneda to Schopenhauer, from Laurie Colwin to Harry Potter and I know I’m constantly saying “I love this book!” but I do have a very favorite author who has a special place in my heart and that is Leo Tolstoy.
He wins the big prize.
The translator of Tolstoy’s work “The Kingdom of Heaven in Within You” says it best: “Tolstoy’s genius is beyond dispute.”
Here are two of my favorite works:
What I Believe by Leo Tolstoy, published 1886
The Kingdom of Heaven is Within you by Leo Tolstoy, published 1894
Here is from the Introduction of What I Believe (which at 55 years of age, he would have written in 1883):
I am fifty-five years old and, with the exception of the fourteen or fifteen years of my childhood, I have been until recently a “Nihilist” in the proper signification of that term. I have not been a Socialist or Revolutionist, but a Nihilist in the sense of being completely without faith.
Five years ago I began to believe in the doctrine of Christ, and in consequence a great change has been wrought in me. I now no longer care for the things that I had prized, and I have begun to desire things concerning which I had formerly been indifferent. Like a man who, going out on business, on his way suddenly becomes convinced of the futility of that business and turns back; and all that stood to the right now stands to the left, and all that was to the left is now to the right; his wish to be as far from home as possible is changed to the desire of being as near home as possible – so, I may say, the whole aim and purpose of my life has been changed; my desires are no more what they have been. For me, good and evil have changed places. This experience came through my apprehending the doctrine of Christ in an altogether different way, and seeing it in quite a new light.
It is not my intention to interpret the doctrine of Christ, but simply to relate how I came to understand the simplest, clearest, and most intelligible point in that doctrine; and how, when once I had clearly grasped His meaning, it gave a new direction to all my thoughts.
A free 90-page pdf file of “What I Believe” and “The Kingdom of God is Within You” is available online.
