Bethink Yourselves

He is also the author of other successful novels such as Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilyich. His texts display his unique narratorial style and the strength of his descriptive techniques.

He is mainly remembered for what is considered by many readers and critics as the greatest novel of all times, War and Peace.

Along with Feodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev and Vladimir Nabokov, Leo Tolstoy is one of the most important pillars of Russian literature.

Further it is said: "The hand that is raised to strike and the eye that is fixed to take aim do not belong to the individual, but are the instruments utilized by a principle higher than transient existence." ("The Open Court," May, 1904.

Jesus said, "Bethink yourselves" i.e. "Let every man interrupt the work he has begun and ask himself: Who am I? From whence have I appeared, and in what consists my destiny? And having answered these questions, according to the answer decide whether that which thou doest is in conformity with thy destiny." And every man of our world and time, that is, being acquainted with the essence of the Christian teaching, needs only for a minute to interrupt his activity, to forget the capacity in which he is regarded by men, be it of Emperor, soldier, minister, or journalist, and seriously ask himself who he is and what is his destiny, in order to begin to doubt the utility, lawfulness, and reasonableness of his actions.

Men of our Christian world and of our time are like a man who, having missed the right turning, the further he goes the more he becomes convinced that he is going the wrong way. Yet the greater his doubts, the quicker and the more desperately does he hurry on, consoling himself with the thought that he will arrive somewhere. But the time comes when it becomes quite clear that the way along which he is going will lead to nothing but a precipice, which he is already beginning to discern before him.

Again war. Again sufferings, necessary to nobody, utterly uncalled for; again fraud; again the universal stupefaction and brutalization of men.