1) Women demanding for themselves the work of man and the same freedom, mostly demand for themselves unconsciously the freedom for licence, and as a result go down much lower than the family, though aiming to stand higher than it.
2) What is this memory which makes from me one being, from childhood unto death? What is this faculty connecting separate beings in time, into one? One ought to ask not what is it that unites, but what divides, these beings. The faculty of time divides, beyond which I cannot see myself. I am one indivisible being from birth until death; but to manifest and to know myself, I must do so in time. I am now such as I was and will be; but one who had to and even will manifest myself and know myself in time. I have to manifest myself and know myself in time—for communion with other beings and for influencing them.
3) I plucked a flower and threw it away. There were so many of them, it was no pity. We do not value these inimitable beauties of living beings and destroy them, having no pity not only for plants, but for animals, human people. There are so many of them. Culture, civilisation, is nothing else than the ruin of these beauties and the replacing them ... with what? The saloon, the theatre ...
4) They reproach you with malice, debauchery, lies, thefts, bring proof, etc. What is to be done? Answer the question with What time is it? Are you going to take a swim? Have you seen N N, etc. That is the best and only means of bearing these accusations and even clearing them up.
5) The dearest thing on earth is the good relation between people; but the establishment of these relations is not the result of conversation—on the contrary, they become spoiled by conversation. Speak as little as possible, and especially with those people with whom you want to be in good relation.
6) In eating, I destroy the limits between myself and other beings; creating children, I do almost the same thing. The results of the destruction of material limits are visible; the results of the destruction of the spiritual limits and the union resulting from this are invisible, only because they are broader.
7) “People are divided (divided from other beings), and this appears to them as space. The fact that they are inseparable in essence appears to them as time.” That is the way I have noted it. Space divides, time unites. But this is untrue. Both time and space are dividers and they form the impossibility of realising unity. (Unclear, but I understand. I will make it clear later.)
8) Brotherhood is natural, proper to people. Non-brotherhood, divisions, are carefully nurtured.
9) Sometimes one feels like complaining childishly to some one (to God), to beg for help. Is this feeling good? It is not good: it is a weakness, a lack of faith. That which more than anything resembles faith—the beseeching prayer, is in truth a lack of faith—a lack of faith that there is no evil, that there is nothing to ask for, that if things are going badly with you, then it only demonstrates that you ought to improve yourself, and that there is going on, that very thing which ought to be, and under which you ought to do that which has to be done.
10) Just now I wrote this coldly, understanding with difficulty that state in which you wish to live for God alone, and I see through this how there are people who absolutely never understand this, not knowing any other kind of life besides the worldly, for people. I know this state, but cannot just now call it up in myself, but only remember it.