7) A man is a being separated from all others, who feels his limits. Among the number of general limits by which he separates himself from other beings, are his limits which are in common with that being incomprehensible to him—the earth. Death is the destruction of all the various common limits with other beings and always of the common limit of the being of the earth—a fusion with earth. Every sickness, wound, old age, is a destruction of these limits.
8) The work of life is to love. It is impossible to love expressly those people unworthy of love; but it is possible not to love—to behave well, in a good way, toward such people in every given moment.
9) I remembered keenly what a matter of enormous importance was complete truthfulness in every detail, in everything, the avoidance of all outer false forms. And I decided to keep to this. It is never too late to mend.[345]
10) The minister said to the murderer: “Oh brother, don’t worry. God has pardoned even greater sinners. But who are you? Don’t lose heart. Pray.” The murderer burst into tears.
11) How great and stable seemed the happiness of the American people, and how unstable it proved to be, like all happiness not founded on life, according to the law of Christ. The Spanish-American War, Jingoism.
12) I have often prayed (almost without believing, to try out) that God arrange my life as I wish. To-day I simply prayed my customary morning prayer and rather attentively. And after this prayer, I recalled my wish and wanted to add a prayer about the fulfilment of this wish, and tried to address God about it. And immediately I realised my mistake—that it would be very much better if everything was not according to my will, but according to His. And without the least effort and with joy I said: “Yes, let there not be my will, but Thine.”
13) A spiritual life means that you should see the connection between cause and effect in the spiritual world and that you be guided in life by this connection. Materialists do not see this connection and therefore do not take it as a guide for their acts, but they take as a guide for their acts the physical, causal connection, the one which is so complicated that we never fully know it, because every effect is an effect of an effect; but the fundamental cause of everything—is always spiritual. (Not clearly expressed, but important).
14) Epictetus says this very thing when he reproaches people for being very attentive to the phenomenon of the outer world—to that which is not in our power and being inattentive to the phenomenon of the inner, to that which is in our power.
15) To many it seems that if you exclude personality from life and a love for it, then nothing will remain. It seems to them that without personality there is no life. But this only appears so to people who have not experienced self-renunciation. Throw off personality from life, renounce it, and then there will remain that which makes the essence of life—love.