2.04.2011

"Rules of Life" from Tolstoy

* Get up early (five o’clock)
* Go to bed early (nine to ten o’clock)
* Eat little and avoid sweets
* Try to do everything by yourself
* Have a goal for your whole life, a goal for one section of your life, a goal for a shorter period and a goal for the year; a goal for every month, a goal for every week, a goal for every day, a goal for every hour and for evry minute, and sacrifice the lesser goal to the greater
* Keep away from women
* Kill desire by work
* Be good, but try to let no one know it
* Always live less expensively than you might
* Change nothing in your style of living even if you become ten times richer

Obviously I'm more in support of some (early mornings are the best) than others (killing desire with work? Yikes, even with my Puritan roots I can't get behind that), but some good stuff overall. I love a list. (Thanks to A for sending them my way)

Image: source.

1 comment:

zac said...

He became rather puritanical later in life to the point that he eventually renounced his entire estate and family to wander in poverty. He died a few days later in a train station.