On the Mindless Menace of Violence (1968)
Context: Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence. We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.
“But it must be admitted that our heart is never seriously inclined to wish for and to mediate on the future life unless it has first thoroughly learned to forsake the vanities of the present world.”
Page 69.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)
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John Calvin 161
French Protestant reformer 1509–1564Related quotes
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 189.
Speech delivered at Scottish Church College, Kolkata on 7th December 1935.
N.Y. Herald Tribune (September 9, 1956)
“If one has no vanity in this life of ours, there is no sufficient reason for living.”
Source: The Kreutzer Sonata (1889), Ch. 23. This is not, as it is often quoted, a stand-alone Tolstoy epigram, but part of the narration by the novella's jealousy-ridden protagonist Pozdnyshev.