(It is still unclear, but understandable.)
12) If we would always remember that our tongue was given us for the transmission of our thoughts, and the capacity of thinking for the understanding of God and His law of love, and that therefore you must talk only then when you have something good to say! But when you cannot say anything good, cannot keep back the bad—then be silent, even all your life.
13) As soon as you have a disagreeable feeling towards a man, it means there is something you don’t know. And you ought to find out: you ought to find out the motives of that act which was disagreeable to you. And as soon as you have understood the motives clearly then it can anger you as little as a falling stone.
14) You get angry at a woman because she does not understand—or she understands, but does not do that which her reason tells her. She is unable to do it. Just as a magnet acts on iron and does not act on wood, so are the conclusions of reason not binding on her—have no motor power. For her feeling is binding, and the conclusions of reasons are so only when they are transmitted by authorities, i.e., by the feeling of the desire not to remain behind others. So that she will not believe and will not follow an obvious demand of reason, if it be not confirmed by an authority; but she will believe and follow the greatest absurdity if only every one does it. She cannot do otherwise. But we get angry. There are also many men like that—womanish.
15) One has to serve others, not oneself, if only for the reason that in the serving of others there is a limit and therefore it is possible here to act rationally, build a house for him who is without, buy cattle, clothes; but in the serving of oneself there is no limit: the more you serve, the worse it is.
16) Time is only for the body: it is the relationship of beings with the various limits seen by us, to beings whose limits we do not see; to the movement of the sun, the moon, the earth, to the movement of the sands in the hour-glass. And therefore time is for that which we call the body, for that which has limits; but for that which has no limits: for the spiritual—there is no time. Therefore you remember only those times in which you lived spiritually. (Unclear, but was clear.)
17) We suffer from ourselves, from the demands of our “self,” and we all know that the only means for not suffering from that “self,” is to forget it. And we seek forgetfulness in distractions, in occupations with art, science, in wine, in smoking—and there is no real forgetfulness. But God made it so that there should be only one real forgetfulness, one that is real and always at hand—in the care for others, in the serving of others.
But I forgot this and I live a terribly selfish life, and therefore I am unhappy.
18) I went past the out-houses. I remembered the nights that I spent there, and the youth and the beauty of Duniasha (I never had any relation with her), her strong, womanly body. Where is it? It has been long nothing but bones. What are those bones? What is their relation to Duniasha? There was a time when those bones formed a part of that separate being which had been Duniasha. Then this being changed its centre and that which had been Duniasha became a part of another being, enormous, inconceivable to me in magnitude, which I call earth. We do not know the life of the earth, and therefore we think it dead, just like an insect who lives one hour thinks my body dead, because he does not see its movement.
19) Space is the relation of various limited beings among themselves. It exists. But time is only the relation of the movement of living beings among themselves, and the movement of matter which we consider dead.