A Confession
Автор:
Толстой ЛевЖанр:
Религия и духовность: Прочее;Серия:
3Дата добавления:
2013-11-17Язык книги:
EnglishКол-во страниц:
16Религия и духовность: Прочее стр.1 - книги на английском
Description
Leo Tolstoy wrote this short meditation on sadness and the meaning of life when he was middle aged. He had already completed his masterworks, Anna Karenina and War and Peace, reared fourteen children, and gained fame and acclaim in Russia as a man of letters. But despite having attained that success, he still found himself unhappy and always returning to the disturbing idea that all achievement is meaningless.
A Confession is his attempt to put these thoughts in words as he...
Gitanjali
Автор:
Rabindranath TagoreДата добавления:
2022-03-19Язык книги:
EnglishКол-во страниц:
16
Description
Widely regarded as one of the most important figures in Indian (and more specifically Bengali) literary history, Rabindranath Tagore was the first Indian—indeed, the first person outside Europe—to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, largely in recognition of his “spiritual offering of songs,” Gitanjali.
Tagore himself translated the poems from the original Bengali, taking many liberties in the process. His English translation is rightly recognized as a work distinct from the Bengali original, consisting of major revisions, many elisions, and many poems originally published in other collections.
Tagore’s lyrical simplicity, vivid imagery, and themes...
Description
G.K. Chesterton was an English writer, journalist, philosopher, poet and lay theologian. He delighted in standing conventional wisdom on its head in order to expose what he considered to be the lack of substance in the “vague modern.”
In Heretics, he touches on a range of topics, including social Darwinism, eugenics, nihilism and atheism, while enumerating the flaws he finds in the work of his intellectual contemporaries such as Rudyard Kipling, Friedrich Nietzsche, George...
Orthodoxy
Автор:
G. K. ChestertonДата добавления:
2022-03-17Язык книги:
EnglishКол-во страниц:
65
Description
Orthodoxy is G. K. Chesterton’s response to his critics’ assertion that his earlier collection of essays, Heretics, had “merely criticised current philosophies without offering any alternative philosophy.” In his intellectual journey from pagan to agnostic to positivist philosopher, he had attempted to build a philosophy “some ten minutes in advance of the truth.” But when he compared his modern philosophy with Christian theology, he realized that he was “the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before.” Thus, Orthodoxy is a work of Christian...
Description
Paradise Lost is an epic poem written by the Puritan English poet John Milton between 1658 and 1663, and published in 1667. This is a period of English history which encompasses the end of Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.
Perhaps reflecting some of his country’s turmoil during Milton’s life, Paradise Lost deals with revolution in Heaven by Satan and his followers against God, their defeat and banishment to Hell, and their subsequent plotting of revenge, leading ultimately to Satan beguiling Eve in Paradise to taste the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge against the explicit command of God. Milton’s vivid and poetic...
Practical Mysticism
Автор:
Evelyn UnderhillДата добавления:
2022-03-18Язык книги:
EnglishКол-во страниц:
34
Description
Surprisingly timeless and under the guise of “Christian Mysticism,” Underhill describes in 1914 what could rightly be called “secular mindfulness” today. Evelyn Underhill doesn’t use much Christian terminology, instead preferring to use words that may be considered “new age.” If one can get past the terminology, the “Practical Mysticism” allows anyone to explore the mystical aspects of their own worldview without necessarily betraying their prior deeply-held beliefs.
Practical Mysticism is not a guidebook for mystical practice, though it does provide some tips along the way. What it does give is an introduction and apology for the sufficiently...
Description
Hermann Hesse wrote Siddhartha during a period in his life in which he suffered what he described as a “sickness with life.” He claimed to be unable to complete the book because he had not experienced the kind of nirvana that Siddhartha, the main character, wants to achieve—so Hesse surrounded himself with sacred Buddhist and Hindu teachings and lived as a recluse in order to complete this work.
Siddhartha is a short, simple tale of a man’s quest to achieve enlightenment and happiness. Over twelve short chapters the reader follows Siddhartha through his time as a young adult, to his exploration of spirituality as a traveling ascetic, to his delvings in lust,...
Description
The Tao Te Ching is a classic Chinese text written around the 6th century BC by Laozi, a Zhou-dynasty courtier. While its authorship is debated, the text remains a fundamental building block of Taoism and one of the most influential works of its time. Today it’s one of the most-translated works in the world.
The work itself is a series of 81 short poetic sections, each one written in a fluid, ambiguous style, leaving them open to wide interpretation. Subjects range from advice to those in power to advice to regular people and adages for daily living. Because of its ambiguous nature the Tao Te Ching is famously difficult to translate, and many, if not all,...
The Divine Comedy
Автор:
Dante AlighieriДата добавления:
2022-03-17Язык книги:
EnglishКол-во страниц:
321
Description
Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy is considered one of the greatest works in world literature, and it established the standardized Italian language that is used today. Writing between 1308 and 1320, Dante draws from countless subjects including Roman Catholic theology and philosophy, the struggle between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, Greek mythology, and geocentric cosmology to answer the age-old question: what does the afterlife look like? Dante’s vision of the answer, this three-volume epic poem, describes in great detail the systematic levels in Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.
The poem opens with Dante’s death—not his actual death that would come shortly...
The Imitation of Christ
Автор:
Thomas à KempisЖанр:
Религия и духовность: Прочее;Дата добавления:
2022-03-17Язык книги:
EnglishКол-во страниц:
66
Description
The Imitation of Christ is a Christian devotional book dating to the early 15th century, originally written anonymously but popularly attributed to Thomas à Kempis. A popular piece of religious literature since it was first circulated, the Imitation is divided into four books that instruct the reader to forego worldly goods, to follow Christ, and to receive the sacrament of Communion, all in order to attain spiritual peace. Admired by numerous Christian theologians and mystics throughout the course of centuries, it is today considered to be the most-read Christian devotional work besides the Bible, going through over 745 printings before 1650. The Imitation even...
The Kingdom of God Is Within You
Автор:
Leo TolstoyДата добавления:
2022-03-19Язык книги:
EnglishКол-во страниц:
124
Description
The Kingdom of God Is Within You is the most influential work of Christian anarchism. It might be considered the founding work of that tradition if it didn’t itself claim to merely be pointing out Christian anarchism as the plain meaning of the gospels.
Tolstoy argues that institutional Christianity with its doctrines, church hierarchies, and ritual practices, is anti-Christian. Christ, he says, explicitly told his followers to reject doctrines, church institutions and hierarchies, and ritual practices, and instead to love truth, to honor God, and to treat all people as your family and as you would want to be treated.
Tolstoy says that a Christian cannot...
The little book of Buddhism
Автор:
Lama DalaiЖанр:
Религия и духовность: Прочее;Серия:
3Дата добавления:
2013-11-16Язык книги:
EnglishКол-во страниц:
5
They say: This little book contains the core teachings on Buddhism by His Holiness The Dalai Lama, one of the greatest spiritual leaders of our time.These thought-provoking quotations about the importance of love and compassion, and the need for individual responsibility, fuse ancient wisdom with the awareness of the problems of everyday...
The Pilgrim’s Progress
Автор:
John BunyanДата добавления:
2022-03-18Язык книги:
EnglishКол-во страниц:
175
Description
The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come was written in 1678 by John Bunyan, a Puritan and a dissenter from the Church of England. It is an allegory of the journey to redemption of the faithful, through many snares and difficulties. Cast in the form of a dream, the first part of the work deals with a man called Christian, who sets off carrying a great burden. He meets many helpers and many adversaries on this journey. The second part of the work deals with Christian’s wife, Christiana, and her four children, who follow a similar journey.
One of the most influential of all religious works, The Pilgrim’s Progress was immediately popular and...
The Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ
Автор:
Sherlock ThomasЖанр:
Религия и духовность: Прочее;Серия:
3Дата добавления:
2013-12-05Язык книги:
EnglishКол-во страниц:
19
Verses on Various Occasions
Автор:
John Henry NewmanДата добавления:
2022-03-18Язык книги:
EnglishКол-во страниц:
36
Description
Verses on Various Occasions is a collection of poems written by John Henry Newman between 1818 and 1865. This period of Newman’s ecclesiastical career saw his ordination as an Anglican priest in 1825, his involvement in the High Church “Oxford Movement” in the 1830s, his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1845, and his founding of the Birmingham Oratory, a Catholic religious community, in 1849.
The poems in this collection span a range of Christian subjects, including piety, biblical prophets, Church Fathers, and Newman’s evolving views on the Catholic Church. Some noteworthy inclusions are “The Pillar of the Cloud,” which has been set to music as the...
