26 letter from Likhachev. Letters to Young Readers. Letter twenty-nine

1. The first letter
LARGE IN SMALL

The adage “the end justifies the means” is destructive and immoral. Dostoevsky showed this well in Crime and Punishment. The main character of this work, Rodion Raskolnikov, thought that by killing the disgusting old woman-usurer, he would get money, with which he could then achieve great goals and benefit mankind, but suffers an internal collapse. The goal is distant and unrealizable, but the crime is real; it is terrible and cannot be justified by anything. It is impossible to strive for a high goal with low means. You have to be equally honest in both big and small.

2. The second letter
YOUTH IS ALL LIFE

Youth is a time of convergence. And this should be remembered and friends should be protected, for real friendship helps a lot in sorrow and in joy. Appreciate all the good things that you acquired in your youth, do not waste the wealth of your youth. Nothing acquired in youth passes without a trace. Habits brought up in youth persist for life. Work skills, too. There is a Russian proverb: "Take care of your honor from your youth." All actions committed in youth remain in the memory. The good ones will please, the bad ones will keep you awake!

3. The third letter
THE BIGGEST

What is the biggest goal of life? I think: to increase the goodness in the environment around us. And good is, first of all, the happiness of all people. You have to be a patriot, not a nationalist. There is no need to hate every other family, because you love yours. There is no need to hate other nations because you are a patriot. There is a profound difference between patriotism and nationalism. In the first - love for their country, in the second - hatred for all others.

Love should not be unaccountable, it should be smart. This means that it must be combined with the ability to notice flaws, to deal with flaws - both in a loved one and in the people around them. It must be combined with wisdom, with the ability to separate the necessary from the empty and the false. She doesn't have to be blind.

4. Letter four
THE GREATEST VALUE LIFE

We must be open to people, tolerant of people, look for the best in them first of all. The ability to seek and find the best, simply "good", "hidden beauty" enriches a person spiritually. Noticing beauty in nature, in a village, city, street, not to mention in a person, through all the barriers of little things, means expanding the sphere of life, the sphere of that vital space in which a person lives. The greatest value in the world is life: someone else's, one's own, the life of the animal world and plants, the life of culture, life throughout its entire course - both in the past, in the present, and in the future ...

5. Letter five
WHAT IS A SENSE OF LIFE

Every person should have one rule in life, in his purpose of life, in his principles of life, in his behavior: one must live life with dignity, so that he would not be ashamed to remember.
The task of each person, both large and small, is to raise this level of happiness, to raise it in life. And your personal happiness also does not remain outside these concerns. But mainly - those around you, those who are closer to you, whose level of happiness can be increased simply, easily, without worries. And besides, it means increasing the level of happiness of your country and of all humanity in the end. A person is born and leaves behind a memory. What memory will he leave behind? This should be taken care of not only from a certain age, but, I think, from the very beginning, since a person can leave at any moment and at any moment. And it is very important what kind of memory he leaves about himself.

6. Letter six
PURPOSE AND SELF-ASSESSMENT

If a person lives in order to bring good to people, to alleviate their suffering in case of illness, to give people joy, then he evaluates himself at the level of this humanity. He sets himself a goal worthy of a man. No one is immune from mistakes. But the most important mistake, a fatal mistake, is the wrongly chosen main task in life. The main task in life must necessarily be a broader task than just a personal one; it should not be limited only to one's own successes and failures. It should be dictated by kindness to people, love for family, for your city, for your people, country, for the whole universe.

7. The seventh letter
WHAT UNITS PEOPLE

Caring - unites people, strengthens the memory of the past and is directed entirely towards the future. This is not the feeling itself - it is a concrete manifestation of the feeling of love, friendship, patriotism. A person should be caring. A careless or carefree person is most likely an unkind person and does not love anyone. Morality is highly compassionate. In compassion there is a consciousness of one's unity with humanity and the world (not only with people, nations, but also with animals, plants, nature, etc.). The feeling of compassion (or something close to it) makes us fight for cultural monuments, for their preservation, for nature, individual landscapes, for respect for memory. In compassion there is a consciousness of one's unity with other people, with a nation, people, country, universe.

8. The eighth letter
BE FUN BUT DON'T BE FUNNY

Being always friendly and cheerful is a great and real art that helps to live in society and in society itself. Noisy and obsessive fun is tiresome to others. The young man who is always “pouring out” witticisms ceases to be perceived as a worthy man. He becomes a jester. There is no better music than silence, silence in the mountains, silence in the forest. There is no better “music in a person” than modesty and the ability to keep quiet, not to be promoted to the first place. There is nothing more unpleasant and stupid in the appearance and behavior of a person than importance or noisiness. Be truthful. The one who seeks to deceive others is first of all deceived himself. He naively thinks that they believed him, but those around him were actually just polite. But a lie always betrays itself, a lie is always "felt", and you not only become disgusting, worse - you are funny. Simplicity and "silence" in a person, truthfulness, lack of pretensions in dress and behavior - this is the most attractive "form" in a person, which becomes his most elegant "content".

9. Letter Nine
WHEN SHOULD I GET OFFENSE?

In general, excessive resentment is a sign of a lack of intelligence or some kind of complexion. Be smart. There is a good English rule: to be offended only when they want to offend you, they deliberately hurt you. There is no need to take offense at simple inattention, forgetfulness (sometimes characteristic of a given person by age, by any psychological deficiencies). On the contrary, show special attentiveness to such a “forgetful” person - it will be beautiful and noble. This is if they “offend” you, but what about when you yourself can offend another? You need to be especially careful with touchy people. Resentment is a very painful character trait.

10. Letter ten
HONOR TRUE AND FALSE

There is one significant difference between conscience and honor. Conscience always comes from the depths of the soul, and conscience is purified to some extent. Conscience "gnaws". Conscience is never wrong. It can be muted or too exaggerated (extremely rare). But beliefs about honor can be completely false, and these false beliefs cause colossal damage to society. I mean what is called "the honor of the uniform." "The honor of the uniform" forces the leaders to defend false or vicious projects, insist on the continuation of obviously unsuccessful construction projects, fight against the societies protecting monuments ... True honor is always in accordance with conscience. False honor - a mirage in the desert, in the moral desert of the human (or rather, "bureaucratic") soul.

11. Letter eleventh
ABOUT CAREERISM

A person is constantly striving towards the future, and the future is no longer in real knowledge, not in mastering skill, but in arranging himself in an advantageous position. The content, the original content, has been lost. The present time does not come, there is still an empty striving for the future. This is careerism. An inner anxiety that makes a person unhappy personally and unbearable for others.

12. Letter twelfth
A HUMAN MUST BE INTELLIGENT

Many people think: an intelligent person is one who has read a lot, received a good education (and even mostly humanitarian), traveled a lot, knows several languages. Meanwhile, you can have all this and be unintelligent, and you can not possess anything to a large extent, but still be an internally intelligent person.

Intelligence is not only in knowledge, but in the ability to understand the other. It manifests itself in a thousand and a thousand little things: in the ability to respectfully argue, to behave modestly at the table, in the ability to imperceptibly (just imperceptibly) to help another, to protect nature, not to litter around you - not litter with cigarette butts or swearing, bad ideas (this is also garbage, and what another!).

Intelligence is the ability to understand, to perceive, it is a tolerant attitude towards the world and towards people. Intelligence must be developed in oneself, trained - to train mental strength, just as physical strength is trained. And training is possible and necessary in any conditions.

13. Letter Thirteenth
About upbringing

I am convinced, for example, that real good breeding is manifested primarily at home, in my family, in relations with my relatives.

A well-mannered person is one who wants and knows how to reckon with others, this is the one to whom his own politeness is not only familiar and easy, but also pleasant. This is the one who is equally polite with the elder and younger years and by position.

A well-mannered person in all respects does not behave "loudly", saves the time of others ("Accuracy is the courtesy of kings," the proverb says), strictly fulfills the promises made to others, does not puff up, does not "turn up his nose" and is always the same - at home, at school, at the institute, at work, in the store and on the bus.

At the heart of all good manners is concern - taking care that a person does not interfere with a person, so that everyone would feel good together. We must be able not to interfere with each other. It is necessary not to memorize hundreds of rules, but to remember one thing - the need to respect others.

14. Letter fourteenth
OF BAD AND GOOD INFLUENCES

Influences are both good and bad. Remember this. But bad influences should be feared. Because a person with a will does not give in to bad influence, he chooses his own path. A weak-willed person succumbs to bad influences. Be afraid of unaccountable influences: especially if you still do not know how to accurately, clearly distinguish good from bad, if you like the praise and approval of your comrades, no matter what these praises and approvals may be: if only they were praised.

15. Letter fifteenth
ABOUT ENVY

… How to get rid of an extremely painful feeling of envy: develop your own individual inclinations, your own uniqueness in the world around you, be yourself, and you will never be envious. Envy develops primarily where you are a stranger to yourself. Envy develops primarily where you do not distinguish yourself from others. If you are jealous, you have not found yourself.

16. Letter sixteenth
ABOUT GREEDY

Greed is the forgetting of one's own dignity, it is an attempt to put one's material interests above oneself, it is a mental laxity, an eerie orientation of the mind, extremely limiting it, mental stupidity, pity, an icteric view of the world, acrimony towards oneself and others, forgetfulness of camaraderie. Greed in a person is not even funny, it is humiliating. She is hostile to herself and others. Reasonable frugality is another matter; greed is its distortion, its disease. Thrift is the master of the mind, greed is the master of the mind.

17. Letter seventeenth
Be able to argue with dignity

The dispute immediately reveals intelligence, logical thinking, politeness, the ability to respect people and ... self-respect. If in a dispute a person cares not so much about the truth as about victory over his opponent, does not know how to listen to his opponent, seeks to “shout out” the opponent, frighten with accusations, this is an empty person, and his argument is empty.

Remember: there is nothing more beautiful in a dispute than calmly, if necessary, admit the complete or partial correctness of the enemy. By doing this, you win the respect of others. By doing this, you kind of call on your adversary for compliance, forcing him to soften the extremes of his position. Of course, admitting the correctness of the enemy is possible only when it is not about your general convictions, not your moral principles (they should always be the highest).

18. Letter Eighteenth
THE ART OF WRONG

We must be able to get out of mistakes: correct them immediately and ... beautifully. Yes, exactly beautiful.

It is not always easy to admit your mistake to yourself (it is not necessary to do it publicly: then it is either embarrassing or just a show), experience is needed. Experience is needed to get involved in the work as soon as possible and as easily as possible after a perfect mistake, to continue it. And those around him do not need to force a person to admit a mistake, they must be encouraged to correct it; reacting in the same way as spectators react in competitions, sometimes even rewarding the fallen and easily corrected his mistake with joyful applause at the first opportunity.

19. Letter Nineteenth
HOW TO SAY?

A truly strong and healthy, balanced person will not speak loudly unnecessarily, will not swear and use slang words. After all, he is sure that his word is so weighty.

Our language is an essential part of our overall behavior in life. And by the way a person speaks, we can immediately and easily judge who we are dealing with: we can determine the degree of a person's intelligence, the degree of his psychological balance, the degree of his possible "complexes". It is necessary to learn good, calm, intelligent speech for a long time and carefully - listening, memorizing, noticing, reading and studying. But even though it is difficult, it is necessary, necessary. Our speech is the most important part not only of our behavior (as I said), but also of our personality, our soul, mind, our ability not to succumb to the influences of the environment, if it "drags on".

20. Letter Twentieth
HOW TO SPEAK?

The speaker himself should be interested in the subject of his speech and be able to convey this interest to the audience - to make them feel the speaker's interest. Only then will it be interesting to listen to him. In every speech there should be one dominant idea, one thought that others obey. Then the performance will not only interest, but also be remembered.

Basically, always speak from a good position. Even opposing any idea or thought, strive to build as support for the positive that is in the objections of the person arguing with you. Public speaking should always be from a public standpoint. Then it will meet with sympathy.

21. Letter twenty-one
HOW TO WRITE?

Strive to write in short phrases, making sure that transitions from phrase to phrase are easy. Fear empty eloquence! The language of scientific work should be light, imperceptible, beauty in it should be inadmissible, and its beauty lies in the sense of proportion.

... there is no thought outside of its expression in language and the search for a word is, in essence, a search for thought. The inaccuracies of language arise primarily from the inaccuracy of thought.

22. Letter twenty-two
LOVE TO READ!

Each person is obliged (I emphasize - is obliged) to take care of his intellectual development. This is his duty to the society in which he lives and to himself. The main (but, of course, not the only) way of one's intellectual development is reading. Reading should not be casual. ... for it to be effective, it must interest the reader.

Learn to read with interest and without rushing. The classic is one that has stood the test of time. With it you will not waste your time. But the classics cannot answer all the questions of today. Therefore, it is necessary to read contemporary literature as well. Don't just throw yourself at every fancy book. Don't be fussy. Vanity makes a person recklessly spend the greatest and most precious capital that he possesses - his time.

23. Letter twenty-third
ABOUT PERSONAL LIBRARIES

The personal library is considered the business card of the owner. You don’t need to make your library too big, you don’t need to fill it with "one-time reading" books. Such books should be borrowed from the library. At home there should be books of repeated reading, classics (and, moreover, favorite ones), and most of all reference books, dictionaries, bibliography. They can sometimes replace an entire library. Be sure to keep your own bibliography and note on the cards of this bibliography what in this book seems important and necessary to you.

24. Letter Twenty-Four
LET'S BE HAPPY

The more a person is surrounded by this spiritual culture, immersed in it, the happier he is, the more interesting it is for him to live, life becomes meaningful for him. And in a purely formal relationship to work, to teaching, to friends and acquaintances, to music, to art, this "spiritual culture" is absent. This is “lack of spirituality” - the life of a mechanism that does not feel anything, is incapable of loving, sacrificing itself, and having moral and aesthetic ideals.

Let us be happy people, that is, those who have attachments, who deeply and seriously love something significant, who know how to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their beloved work and loved ones.

25. Letter twenty-five
By the command of conscience

The best behavior is one that is determined not by external recommendations, but by mental necessity. Mental necessity is, perhaps, especially good when it is unaccountable. You must do the right thing without thinking, without thinking for a long time. An unaccountable spiritual need to do good, to do good to people is the most valuable thing in a person.

But this spiritual need is not always inherent in a person from birth. She is brought up in a person and is brought up mainly by himself - by his determination to live truthfully, in a kind way.

Strive to walk in the paths of good as simply and unconsciously as you walk in general.

26. Letter twenty-six
LEARN LEARN!

Teaching is what a young man needs now from a very young age. You should always learn. Until the end of life, not only taught, but studied all the major scientists. It must be remembered that the most favorable time for learning is youth. It is in youth, in childhood, in adolescence, in youth that the mind of a person is most receptive. He is receptive to the study of languages \u200b\u200b(which is extremely important), to mathematics, to the assimilation of just knowledge and the development of aesthetic, which stands next to moral development and partially stimulates it. Know how not to waste time on trifles, on "rest", which sometimes tires more than the hardest work, do not fill your bright mind with muddy streams of stupid and purposeless "information". Take care of yourself for learning, for acquiring knowledge and skills that you will learn quickly and easily only in your youth. If you do not like something in any subject, strain and try to find in it a source of joy - the joy of acquiring something new. Learn to love learning!

27. Letter twenty-seventh
FOURTH DIMENSION

Let the houses we walk past, let the cities and villages in which we live, let even the factory where we work, or the ships we sail on, be alive for us, that is, have a past! We will know history - the history of everything that surrounds us on a large and small scale. This is the fourth, very important dimension of the world. But we not only need to know the history of everything that surrounds us, starting with our family, continuing with the village or city and ending with the country and the world, but also keep this history, this immense depth of the environment. Let us more actively defend everything that makes our life meaningful, rich and spiritual.

28. Letter Twenty-Eighth
BE TOGETHER

Games are very important in educational terms. The game - be it rounders, volleyball, burners or some other kind - fosters sociality, it fosters the ability to stick together, play together, feel a partner, feel an opponent. This is a very important educational thing - play. At home they are busy watching TV. And before they played digital lotto, children played, adults played, and this served to communicate between adults and children, this was one of the moments that was very important in educational terms. But not only bingo, there were different games in which the whole family took part.

29. Letter twenty-ninth
TRAVEL!

One of the greatest values \u200b\u200bin life is travel in one's own country and in foreign countries. Do not miss an opportunity to find something interesting even where you think it is not interesting. There are no uninteresting places on earth: there are only uninteresting people, people who do not know how to find interesting, internally boring. Traveling opens up a lot to us, makes us think and dream about a lot.

30. Letter thirtieth
MORAL TOP AND ATTITUDE TO THEM

Can we characterize a people by their shortcomings? Each nation should be judged by those moral heights and by the ideals by which it lives. Benevolence to any people, the smallest! This position is the most faithful, the most noble. Generally speaking, any ill will always build a wall of misunderstanding. Benevolence, on the other hand, opens the way for correct knowledge.

31. Letter thirty-one
CIRCLE OF MORAL SETTLEMENT

How to cultivate in oneself and in others "moral settledness" - attachment to one's family, to one's home, village, city, country? I think that this is not only a matter of schools and youth organizations, but also of the family. Seeing, listening, remembering - and all this with love for people: how important it is! Noticing the good is not easy at all. You cannot value people only for their intelligence and intelligence: appreciate them for their kindness, for their work, for the fact that they are representatives of their own circle - fellow villagers or fellow practitioners, citizens of the same city, or simply “your own”, “special” in some way.

One thing I would like to dwell on especially: our attitude to graves and cemeteries. Very often, city planners-architects are annoyed by the presence of a cemetery within the city. They are trying to destroy it, turn it into a garden, and yet the cemetery is an element of the city, a peculiar and very valuable part of the city's architecture. The graves were made with love. Tombstones embodied gratitude to the deceased, the desire to perpetuate his memory. That is why they are so diverse, individual and always curious in their own way. Reading forgotten names, sometimes looking for famous people buried here, their relatives or just acquaintances, visitors learn to some extent the “wisdom of life”. Many cemeteries are poetic in their own way. Therefore, the role of lonely graves or cemeteries in the upbringing of "moral settledness" is very great.

32. Letter thirty-second
UNDERSTAND THE ART

The wealth that an understanding of works of art gives a person cannot be taken away from a person, and they only need to be seen everywhere. Art illuminates and at the same time sanctifies human life. And again I repeat: it makes him kinder, and therefore happier. But understanding works of art is far from easy. You have to learn this - learn for a long time, all your life. You should not approach a work of art with a bias based on an established "opinion", out of fashion, from the views of your friends or based on the views of enemies. With a work of art, you must be able to remain "one on one". To understand art, you need more knowledge. They do not force the reader, viewer or listener to make a certain assessment or a certain attitude towards a work of art, but, as if "commenting" on it, facilitate understanding.

33. Letter thirty-third
ABOUT HUMAN IN ART

How many of these touching human episodes are in War and Peace, especially in everything connected with the Rostov family, or in Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter and in any work of art. Is it not for them that we love Dickens, Turgenev's Notes of a Hunter, the wonderful Ant-Grass by Fyodor Abramov or The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. Humanity has always been one of the most important phenomena of literature - large and small. It is worth looking for these manifestations of simple human feelings and concerns. They are precious. And they are especially precious when you find them in correspondence, in memoirs, in documents. There are, for example, a number of documents showing how ordinary peasants evaded, under various pretexts, from participating in the construction of a prison in Pustozersk, where Avvakum was supposed to be a prisoner. And this is absolutely everything, unanimously! Their evasions are almost childish, they show simple and kind people in them.

34. Letter thirty-fourth
ABOUT RUSSIAN NATURE

Nature is "social" in its own way. Its "sociality" also lies in the fact that it can live next to a person, coexist with him, if he, in turn, is social and intellectual himself, protects her, does not cause irreparable damage to her, does not cut down forests to the end, does not litter rivers. .. The Russian peasant, with his centuries-old labor, created the beauty of Russian nature. He plowed the land and thus gave it certain dimensions. He laid a measure on his arable land, passing through it with a plow. The boundaries in Russian nature are commensurate with the work of man and his horse, his ability to walk with the horse behind the plow or plow, before turning back, and then forward again. Smoothing the earth, a person removed all sharp edges, bumps, stones in it. Russian nature is soft, it is groomed by the peasant in his own way. The peasant's walking behind the plow, plow, harrow not only created rye stripes, but evened out the forest boundaries, formed its edges, created smooth transitions from forest to field, from field to river.

A wide space has always ruled the hearts of Russians. It poured into concepts and representations that are not in other languages. How, for example, is the difference between will and freedom? The fact that free will is freedom, combined with space, with nothing barred by space. And the concept of longing, on the contrary, is combined with the concept of crampedness, deprivation of space for a person. Oppressing a person is to deprive him of space in the literal and figurative sense of the word. Delight for the vastness is already present in ancient Russian literature - in the Primary Chronicle, in the "Lay of Igor's Host", in the "Word on the Destruction of the Russian Land", in "", and in almost every work of the most ancient period of the 11th-13th centuries. Everywhere events either cover huge spaces, as in "The Lay of Igor's Campaign", or take place among vast spaces with responses in distant countries, as in "". Since ancient times, Russian culture has considered freedom and space as the greatest aesthetic and ethical blessing for man.

35. Letter thirty-fifth
ABOUT RUSSIAN LANDSCAPE PAINTING

In Russian landscape painting, there are a lot of works dedicated to the seasons: autumn, spring, winter - favorite themes of Russian landscape painting throughout the 19th century and later. And most importantly, in it there are not invariable elements of nature, but most often temporary ones: early or late autumn, spring waters, melting snow, rain, thunderstorms, the winter sun that peeped out for a moment due to heavy winter clouds, etc. nature does not have eternal large objects that do not change at different times of the year, such as mountains, evergreen trees. Everything in Russian nature is unstable in color and condition. Trees - sometimes with bare branches, creating a kind of "winter graphics", then with bright, spring, picturesque foliage. An autumn forest with a variety of shades and color saturation. Different conditions of water, which takes on the color of the sky and the surrounding shores, changing under the influence of strong or weak wind (painting "Siverko" by Ostroukhov), road puddles, different colors of the air itself, fog, dew, frost, snow - dry and wet. An eternal masquerade, an eternal celebration of colors and lines, a war movement - within a year or a day.

36. Letter thirty-six
NATURE OF OTHER COUNTRIES

I have felt for a long time that it is time to answer the question: do other peoples not have the same feeling for nature, do not have a union with nature? There is, of course! And I am not writing in order to prove the superiority of Russian nature over the nature of other peoples. But each nation, as it were, has its own union with nature. In order to compare different landscapes created by the joint efforts of people and the elements, it seems to me that you need to visit the Caucasus, Central Asia, as well as Spain, Italy, England, Scotland, Norway, Bulgaria, Turkey, Japan, Egypt. It is impossible to judge nature by photographs and landscape painting.

37. Letter thirty-seventh
ENSEMBLES OF ART MONUMENTS

Each country is an ensemble of arts. There is a unity of people, nature and culture in the country.

Preserving the diversity of our cities and villages, preserving their historical memory, their common national and historical originality is one of the most important tasks of our city planners. The whole country is a grandiose cultural ensemble. He must be preserved in his astounding wealth. It is not only the historical memory that fosters up in one's city and in one's village, but also the country as a whole educates a person. Now people live not only in their "point", but throughout the country and not only in their own century, but in all centuries of their history.

38. Letter Thirty-Eighth
GARDENS AND PARKS

Gardens and parks create a kind of “ideal” interaction between man and nature, “ideal” for every stage of human history, for every creator of a landscape gardening work. Gardens and parks are an important milestone where man and nature unite. Gardens and parks are equally important - both in the city and outside the city. It is no coincidence that there are so many wonderful parks in our native Moscow region. There is nothing more exciting, captivating, exciting than bringing the human into nature, and solemnly, “by the hand” to introduce nature into human society: look, admire, rejoice.

39. Letter thirty-ninth
THE NATURE OF RUSSIA AND PUSHKIN

I want to give one big and historically lengthy analogy. There have always been more or less extensive regular gardens near the palace. Architecture connected with nature through the architectural part of the garden. So it was at the time when the fashion for romantic landscape gardens came. This was the case under Paul and in the noble estates of the XIX century, in particular in the famous Moscow region. The further from the palace, the more natural nature. Even during the Renaissance era in Italy, outside the Renaissance architectural gardens, there was a natural part of the owner's possession for walking - the nature of the Roman Campagna. The longer the routes of a person for walking became, the further he went from his home, the more the nature of his country was revealed to him, the wider and closer to the house - the natural, landscape part of his parks. Pushkin discovered nature first in Tsarskoye Selo parks near the palace and the Lyceum, but then he went beyond the "well-groomed nature". From the regular lyceum garden, he moved to its park area, and then to the Russian village. This is the landscape route of Pushkin's poetry. From the garden to the park and from the park to the rural Russian nature. Accordingly, his national and social vision of nature grew. He saw that nature is not only beautiful, but not at all idyllic.

40. Letter fortieth
ABOUT MEMORY

Memory resists the destructive power of time. Memory is overcoming time, overcoming death. This is the greatest moral significance of memory. A “forgetful” person is, first of all, an ungrateful, irresponsible person, and consequently, incapable of good, disinterested actions. Conscience is basically a memory, to which a moral assessment of the perfect is added. But if the perfect is not stored in memory, then there can be no evaluation. There is no conscience without memory.

Human culture as a whole not only possesses memory, but it is memory par excellence. The culture of humanity is an active memory of humanity, actively introduced into the present.

Memory is the basis of conscience and morality, memory is the basis of culture, "accumulations" of culture, memory is one of the foundations of poetry - the aesthetic understanding of cultural values. To preserve memory, to preserve memory is our moral duty to ourselves and to our descendants. Memory is our wealth.

41. Letter forty-first
MEMORY OF CULTURE

The science that deals with the protection and restoration of the surrounding nature is called ecology. And ecology is already beginning to be taught at universities. But ecology should not be confined only to the tasks of preserving the biological environment that surrounds us. A person lives not only in the natural environment, but also in the environment created by the culture of his ancestors and himself. Preservation of the cultural environment is a task no less important than the preservation of the surrounding nature.

To love your family, your childhood impressions, your home, your school, your village, your city, your country, your culture and language, the entire globe is necessary, absolutely essential for a person's moral settledness. Man is not a tumbleweed steppe plant, which is driven by the autumn wind across the steppe. Each person is obliged to know among what beauty and what moral values \u200b\u200bhe lives. He should not be self-confident and arrogant in rejecting the culture of the past indiscriminately and “judgment”. Everyone is obliged to take an all possible part in the preservation of culture. We are responsible for everything, and not someone else, and it is in our power not to be indifferent to our past. It is ours, in our common possession.

42. Letter forty-second
KNOW THE BEAUTY OF OUR CITIES AND VILLAGES

Russian legislation begins with a philosophical argument that every new house in a city affects the appearance of the city as a whole. Particular attention in Russian urban planning legislation is drawn to the views of nature that open from houses and the city. New centers of old cities should be built outside the old ones, and old ones should be supported in their most valuable urban planning principles. These urban planning principles were, and they should not be destroyed. Architects building in old cities must know the history of “their” cities and feel their beauty. The cultural past of our country must be understood not in its parts, but in its whole. It is necessary not only to preserve individual buildings or individual landscapes and landscapes, but also to preserve the very nature and natural landscape. And this means that the new construction should oppose the old as little as possible, so that it would be in harmony with it, so that the everyday habits of the people (this is also “culture”) in their best manifestations would be preserved. A sense of the shoulder, a sense of the ensemble and a sense of the aesthetic ideals of the people - this is what a town planner and especially a village builder should have. Architecture must be social.

43. Letter forty-third
MORE ABOUT MONUMENTS OF THE PAST

Love for one's homeland is not something abstract; it is love for their city, for their locality, for the monuments of its culture, pride in their history. That is why the teaching of history at school should be specific - on the monuments of history, culture, the revolutionary past of their area. One cannot only call on patriotism, it must be carefully nurtured - to cultivate love for one's native places, to cultivate a spiritual settledness. And for all this, it is necessary to develop the science of cultural ecology. Not only the natural environment, but also the cultural environment, the environment of cultural monuments and its impact on humans should be subject to thorough scientific study. There will be no roots in the native area, in the native country - there will be many people similar to the steppe tumbleweed plant.

44. Letter forty-fourth
ABOUT THE ART OF WORD AND PHILOLOGY

The art of speech is the most difficult thing, requiring from a person the greatest inner culture, philological knowledge and philological experience. You may ask me: well, I urge everyone to be philologists, to become all specialists in the humanities? I do not call to be specialists, professionals in the humanities. Of course, all professions are needed, and these professions should be equally and expediently distributed in society. But ... every specialist, every engineer, doctor, every nurse, every carpenter or turner, driver or loader, crane operator and tractor driver must have a cultural outlook. There should be no one who is blind to beauty, deaf to the word and real music, callous to good, unconscious to the past. And for all this you need knowledge, you need intelligence, given by the humanities. Read fiction and understand it, read history books and love the past of mankind, read travel literature, memoirs, read art literature, visit museums, travel meaningfully and be spiritually rich. Yes, be also philologists, that is, “lovers of the word,” for the word stands at the beginning of culture and completes it, expresses it.

45. Letter Forty-Five
SPACE HERMITAGE

Once, about two dozen years ago, the following image occurred to me: the Earth is our tiny house, flying in an immensely large space. Our house! But the Earth is the home of billions and billions of people who lived before us! This is a museum flying defenselessly in a colossal space, a collection of hundreds of thousands of museums, a close accumulation of works by hundreds of thousands of geniuses (oh, if only to count roughly how many there were only one recognized genius on earth!). And not only works of geniuses! How many customs, lovely traditions. How much has been accumulated, saved. How many possibilities. The earth is all covered with diamonds, and under them how many diamonds are still waiting to be cut, made into diamonds. This is something unimaginable in value.

And most importantly: there is no second other life in the Universe! And what is there in front of this incredible value of all our national ambitions, quarrels, personal and state revenge ("retaliatory actions")!

46. \u200b\u200bLetter forty-six
WAYS OF KIND

What is the most important thing in life? The main thing can be in the shades of each of their own, unique. But still, the main thing should be for every person. Life should not be crumbled into trifles, dissolve in everyday worries. And yet, the most important thing: the main thing, no matter how individual it may be for each person, should be kind and significant. A person should be able not only to rise, but to rise above himself, above his personal everyday worries and think about the meaning of his life - looking at the past and looking into the future. In life, you must have your own ministry - service to some cause. Let it be small, it will become big if you are faithful to it. In life, the most valuable thing is kindness, and at the same time kindness is smart, purposeful. Clever kindness is the most valuable thing in a person, the most disposed towards him and the most ultimately true on the path to personal happiness. Happiness is achieved by the one who seeks to make others happy and is able, at least for a while, to forget about his interests, about himself. This is an “irredeemable ruble.” To know this, remember this always and follow the path of kindness is very, very important. Believe me!

The book "Letters about the Good and the Beautiful" by one of the outstanding scientists of our time, the chairman of the Soviet Cultural Fund, academician Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev is addressed not to anyone in particular, but to all readers. First of all - young people who still have to learn life, to follow its difficult paths.

The fact that the author of the letters, Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev, is a person whose name is known on all continents, an outstanding connoisseur of domestic and world culture, elected an honorary member of many foreign academies, and bearing other honorary titles of major scientific institutions, makes this book especially valuable.

And the advice that you can get by reading this book applies to almost all aspects of life.

This is a collection of wisdom, this is the speech of a benevolent Teacher, whose pedagogical tact and the ability to speak with students is one of his main talents.

The book was first published in 1985 and has already become a bibliographic rarity.

This book is being translated in different countries, translated into many languages.

Here is what D.S.Likhachev himself writes in the preface to the Japanese edition, in which he explains why this book was written:

“In my deep conviction, goodness and beauty are one for all peoples. They are united in two senses: truth and beauty are eternal companions, they are one among themselves and are the same for all peoples.

Lying is evil for everyone. Sincerity and truthfulness, honesty and unselfishness are always good.

In my book “Letters about Good and Beautiful”, intended for children, I try to explain with the simplest arguments that following the path of good is the most acceptable and only path for a person. He is tested, he is faithful, he is useful - both to a person alone and to society as a whole.

In my letters I do not try to explain what good is and why a kind person is beautiful inwardly, lives in harmony with himself, with society and with nature. There can be many explanations, definitions and approaches. I strive for something else - for specific examples, based on the properties of general human nature.

I do not subordinate the concept of goodness and the accompanying concept of human beauty to any worldview. My examples are not ideological, because I want to explain them to children even before they begin to subordinate themselves to any definite ideological principles.

Children are very fond of traditions, are proud of their home, their family, as well as their village. But they willingly understand not only their own, but also other people's traditions, someone else's worldview, they grasp the common thing that all people have.

I will be happy if the reader, no matter what age he belongs to (it happens that adults also read children's books), will find in my letters at least a part of what he can agree with.

Consent between people, different nations is the most precious and now the most necessary for humanity. "

LETTERS TO YOUNG READERS

For my conversations with the reader, I have chosen the form of letters. This is, of course, a conditional form. In the readers of my letters, I imagine friends. Letters to friends allow me to write simply.

Why did I arrange my letters this way? At first I write in my letters about the purpose and meaning of life, about the beauty of behavior, and then I move on to the beauty of the world around us, to the beauty that is revealed to us in works of art. I do this because in order to perceive the beauty of the environment, a person himself must be mentally beautiful, deep, and stand on the right life positions. Try to hold the binoculars in trembling hands - you won't see anything.

First letter

LARGE IN SMALL

In the material world, the big cannot fit into the small. In the sphere of spiritual values, it is not so: in the small can fit much more, and if you try to fit the small in the big, then the big will simply cease to exist. If a person has a great goal, then it should manifest itself in everything - in the seemingly insignificant. You have to be honest in the inconspicuous and accidental: only then will you be honest in fulfilling your great duty. A great goal embraces the whole person, is reflected in his every action, and one should not think that a good goal can be achieved by bad means.

The general rule: to observe the big in the small is necessary, in particular, in science. Scientific truth is the most precious thing, and it must be followed in all the details of scientific research and in the life of a scientist. If one strives in science for "small" goals - for proving "by force", in spite of the facts, for the "interestingness" of conclusions, for their effectiveness, or for any forms of self-advancement, then the scientist inevitably fails. Maybe not immediately, but eventually! When exaggerations of the research results obtained or even minor juggling of facts begin and scientific truth is pushed into the background, science ceases to exist, and the scientist himself sooner or later ceases to be a scientist.

The big must be resolutely observed in everything. Then everything is easy and simple.

Second letter

YOUTH IS ALL LIFE

Therefore, take care of youth to a ripe old age. Appreciate all the good things that you acquired in your youth, do not waste the wealth of your youth. Nothing acquired in youth passes without a trace. Habits brought up in youth persist for life. Work skills, too. Accustomed to work - and work will always bring joy. And how important it is for human happiness! There is no more unhappy person than a lazy person who eternally avoids work and effort ...

Both in youth and old age. Good habits of youth will make life easier, bad habits will complicate and complicate it.

And further. There is a Russian proverb: "Take care of your honor from your youth." All actions committed in youth remain in the memory. The good ones will delight, the bad ones will keep you awake!

Third letter

THE BIGGEST

What is the biggest goal of life? I think: to increase the goodness in the environment around us. And good is above all the happiness of all people. It is composed of many things, and every time life presents a person with a task that is important to be able to solve. You can do good to a person in small things, you can think about big things, but small and big things cannot be separated. Much, as I have already said, begins with small things, arises in childhood and in close ones.

The child loves his mother and his father, brothers and sisters, his family, his home. Gradually expanding, his affections spread to school, village, city, and his entire country. And this is already a very big and deep feeling, although one cannot stop there and one must love a person in a person.

You have to be a patriot, not a nationalist. There is no need to hate every other family, because you love yours. There is no need to hate other nations because you are a patriot. There is a profound difference between patriotism and nationalism. In the first - love for their country, in the second - hatred for all others.

The big goal of good begins with a small one - with the desire for good for your loved ones, but, expanding, it captures an ever wider range of issues.

It's like circles on water. But the circles on the water, expanding, become weaker and weaker. Love and friendship, expanding and spreading to many things, acquire new strength, become ever higher, and the person, their center, is wiser.

Love should not be unaccountable, it should be smart. This means that it must be combined with the ability to notice flaws, to deal with flaws - both in a loved one and in the people around them. It must be combined with wisdom, with the ability to separate the necessary from the empty and the false. She doesn't have to be blind. Blind delight (you can't even call it love) can lead to dire consequences. A mother who admires everything and encourages her child in everything can bring up a moral monster. Blind admiration for Germany ("Germany above all" - the words of a chauvinistic German song) led to Nazism, blind admiration for Italy - to fascism.

Wisdom is intelligence combined with kindness. A mind without kindness is cunning. Cunning, however, gradually withers away and, sooner or later, will certainly turn against the cunning one. Therefore, the cunning is forced to hide. Wisdom is open and reliable. She does not deceive others, and above all the wisest person. Wisdom brings the sage a good name and lasting happiness, brings happiness, reliable, long-term and that calm conscience, which is most valuable in old age.

How can I express the commonality that exists between my three positions: "Big in small", "Youth is always" and "The greatest"? It can be expressed in one word that can become the motto: "Loyalty." Loyalty to those great principles that a person should be guided by in big and small, loyalty to his impeccable youth, to his homeland in the broad and in the narrow sense of this concept, loyalty to family, friends, city, country, people. Ultimately, fidelity is fidelity to truth - truth-truth and truth-justice.

The fourth letter

THE BIGGEST VALUE IS LIFE

Life is primarily breathing. "Soul", "spirit"! And he died - first of all - "stopped breathing." So they thought from time immemorial. "Ghost out!" - it means "died".

It is "stuffy" in the house, "stuffy" and in moral life. Thoroughly exhale all the petty worries, all the vanity of everyday life, get rid of, shake off everything that impedes the movement of thought, that crushes the soul, does not allow a person to accept life, its values, its beauty.

A person should always think about the most important for himself and for others, throwing off all empty worries.

We must be open to people, tolerant of people, look for the best in them first of all. The ability to seek and find the best, simply "good", "hidden beauty" enriches a person spiritually.

Noticing beauty in nature, in a village, city, street, not to mention in a person, through all the barriers of little things, means expanding the sphere of life, the sphere of that vital space in which a person lives.

I have been looking for this word for a long time - sphere. At first I said to myself: “We need to expand the boundaries of life” - but life has no boundaries! This is not a land plot enclosed by a fence - borders. Expanding the limits of life is not suitable for expressing my thoughts for the same reason. Expanding the horizons of life is already better, but still something is not right. Maximilian Voloshin has a well-thought-out word for him - "okoy". This is all that the eye contains, that it can grasp. But even here the limitations of our everyday knowledge interfere. Life cannot be reduced to everyday impressions. We must be able to feel and even notice what is beyond our perception, to have, as it were, a “presentiment” of something new that is opening up or that can open up to us. The greatest value in the world is life: someone else's, one's own, the life of the animal world and plants, the life of culture, life throughout its entire length - in the past, and in the present, and in the future ... And life is infinitely deep. We always meet with something that we did not notice before, that amazes us with its beauty, unexpected wisdom, and uniqueness.

The fifth letter

WHAT IS A SENSE OF LIFE

You can define the goal of your existence in different ways, but the goal must be - otherwise it will not be life, but vegetation.

You must also have principles in life. It is good even to state them in a diary, but in order for the diary to be "real", you should not show it to anyone - write for yourself only.

Every person should have one rule in life, in his purpose of life, in his principles of life, in his behavior: one must live life with dignity, so that he would not be ashamed to remember.

Dignity requires kindness, generosity, the ability not to be a narrow egoist, to be truthful, a good friend, to find joy in helping others.

For the sake of the dignity of life, one must be able to refuse small pleasures and considerable ones too ... To be able to apologize, to admit a mistake before others is better than to play around and lie.

In deceiving, a person first of all deceives himself, for he thinks that he has successfully lied, but people understood and, out of delicacy, kept silent.

Letter six

PURPOSE AND SELF-ASSESSMENT

When a person consciously or intuitively chooses a Goal, a life task for himself in life, he at the same time involuntarily evaluates himself. By what a person lives for, one can judge his self-esteem - low or high.

If a person sets himself the task of acquiring all the elementary material goods, he assesses himself at the level of these material goods: as the owner of a car of the latest brand, as the owner of a luxurious dacha, as part of his furniture set ...

Not the one who should be helped? But how many people don't need help? If you are a doctor, then, perhaps, you misdiagnosed the patient? This happens with the best doctors. But in total, you still helped more than you did not. No one is immune from mistakes. But the most important mistake, a fatal mistake, is the wrongly chosen main task in life. Not promoted - chagrin. I didn’t have time to buy a stamp for my collection - a chagrin. Someone has a better furniture than you, or a better car - again a grief, and what a great deal!

Setting himself the task of a career or an acquisition, a person experiences in total much more grief than joys, and risks losing everything. And what can a person lose if he rejoiced in every good deed? It is only important that the good that a person does would be his inner need, would come from an intelligent heart, and not just from the head, would not be just one “principle”.

Therefore, the main life task must necessarily be a broader task than just a personal one; it should not be limited only to one's own successes and failures. It should be dictated by kindness to people, love for family, for your city, for your people, country, for the whole universe.

Does this mean that a person should live like an ascetic, not take care of himself, not acquire anything and not rejoice in a simple promotion? Not at all! A person who does not think about himself at all is an abnormal phenomenon and personally unpleasant to me: there is some kind of breakdown in this, some kind of ostentatious exaggeration in himself of his kindness, disinterestedness, significance, there is some kind of contempt for other people , the desire to stand out.

Therefore, I am only talking about the main task in life. And this main task in life should not be emphasized in the eyes of other people. And you need to dress well (this is respect for others), but not necessarily "better than others." And you need to compile a library for yourself, but not necessarily larger than that of your neighbor. And it's good to buy a car for yourself and your family - it's convenient. Just do not turn the secondary into the primary, and it is not necessary that the main goal of life exhausts you where it is not needed. When you need it is another matter. There we'll see who is capable of what.

Seventh letter

WHAT UNITS PEOPLE

Care floors. Caring strengthens relationships between people. It strengthens the family, strengthens friendship, holds fellow villagers, residents of one city, one country together.

Trace a person's life.

A person is born, and the first concern for him is the mother; gradually (after a few days) the father's care for him comes into direct contact with the child (before the child was born, the care for him was already, but was to a certain extent "abstract" - the parents were preparing for the appearance of the child, dreamed of him).

Feelings of caring for others appear very early, especially in girls. The girl does not speak yet, but is already trying to take care of the doll, babysitting her. Boys, very young, love to pick mushrooms, fish. Girls like to pick berries, mushrooms. And they collect not only for themselves, but for the whole family. They carry it home, prepare it for the winter.

Gradually, children become objects of ever higher care and they themselves begin to show real and widespread care - not only about the family, but also about the school, where their parental care placed them, about their village, city and country ...

Caring is growing and becoming more altruistic. Children pay for taking care of themselves by caring for old parents, when they can no longer repay for caring for children. And this concern for the elderly, and then for the memory of deceased parents, seems to merge with the concern for the historical memory of the family and the motherland as a whole.

If care is directed only to oneself, then an egoist grows up.

Morality is highly compassionate. In compassion there is a consciousness of one's unity with humanity and the world (not only with people, nations, but also with animals, plants, nature, etc.). The feeling of compassion (or something close to it) makes us fight for cultural monuments, for their preservation, for nature, individual landscapes, for respect for memory. In compassion there is a consciousness of one's unity with other people, with a nation, people, country, universe. That is why the forgotten concept of compassion requires its complete revival and development.

Surprisingly correct thought: "A small step for man, a big step for mankind."

There are thousands of examples of this: it costs nothing to be kind to one person, but it is incredibly difficult for humanity to become kind. It is impossible to correct humanity; it is easy to correct yourself. To feed a child, to lead an old man across the street, to make way for a tram, to work well, be polite and courteous ... and so on, etc. - all this is simple for a person, but incredibly difficult for everyone at once. That's why you need to start with yourself.

Good cannot be stupid. A good deed is never stupid, because it is selfless and does not pursue the goal of profit and "smart result". You can call a good deed "stupid" only when it clearly could not achieve the goal or was "falsely kind", mistakenly kind, that is, not kind. I repeat, a truly good deed cannot be stupid, it is beyond evaluations from the point of view of the mind or not the mind. So good and good.

Eighth letter

BE FUN BUT DON'T BE FUNNY

They say that the content determines the form. This is true, but the opposite is also true, that the content depends on the form. The well-known American psychologist of the beginning of this century D. James wrote: "We cry because we are sad, but we are also sad because we cry." Therefore, let's talk about the form of our behavior, about what should become our habit and what should also become our inner content.

It was once considered indecent to show with all your appearance that you had a misfortune, that you had grief. A person should not have to impose his depressed state on others. It was necessary to maintain dignity even in grief, to be equal with everyone, not to immerse in oneself and to remain as friendly and even cheerful as possible. The ability to preserve dignity, not to impose on others with your grief, not to spoil the mood of others, to be always equal in dealing with people, to be always friendly and cheerful is a great and real art that helps to live in society and the society itself.

But how funny should you be? Noisy and obsessive fun is tiresome to others. The young man who is always "pouring out" witticisms ceases to be perceived as worthily behaving. He becomes a jester. And this is the worst thing that can happen to a person in society, and this ultimately means a loss of humor.

Don't be funny.

Not being funny is not only the ability to behave, but also a sign of intelligence.

You can be funny in everything, even in the manner of dress. If a man carefully selects a tie to a shirt, a shirt to a suit, he is ridiculous. Excessive concern for your appearance is immediately visible. We must take care of dressing decently, but this concern for men should not go beyond certain boundaries. A man who is overly concerned about his appearance is unpleasant. A woman is another matter. Men, on the other hand, should only have a hint of fashion in their clothes. A perfectly clean shirt, clean shoes and a fresh but not very bright tie are enough. The suit may be old, it shouldn't just be untidy.

In a conversation with others, be able to listen, be silent, be able to joke, but rarely and on time. Take up as little space as possible. Therefore, at dinner, do not put your elbows on the table, embarrassing your neighbor, but also do not try too hard to be "the soul of society." Observe the measure in everything, do not be intrusive even with your friendly feelings.

Do not be tormented by your shortcomings, if you have them. If you stutter, don't think it's too bad. Stutterers are excellent speakers, considering every word they say. The best lecturer of the historian V.O.Klyuchevsky, famous for its eloquent professors of Moscow University, stuttered. A slight squint can give importance to the face, lameness to movement. But if you are shy, don't be afraid of it either. Don't be ashamed of your shyness: shyness is very cute and not funny at all. It only becomes funny if you try too hard to overcome it and feel shy about it. Be simple and condescending to your shortcomings. Don't suffer from them. It is not worse when an "inferiority complex" develops in a person, and with it anger, hostility towards others, envy. A person loses what is best in him - kindness.

There is no better music than silence, silence in the mountains, silence in the forest. There is no better “music in a person” than modesty and the ability to keep quiet, not to come out on top. There is nothing more unpleasant and stupid in a person's appearance and behavior than importance or noisiness; there is nothing more funny in a man than excessive care of his costume and hairstyle, calculated movements and a "fountain of witticisms" and anecdotes, especially if they are repeated.

In behavior, be afraid to be funny and try to be modest, quiet.

Never dismiss, always be equal with people, respect the people around you.

Here are some tips, it would seem, about the secondary - about your behavior, about your appearance, but also about your inner world: do not be afraid of your physical disabilities. Treat them with dignity and you will be elegant.

I have a girlfriend, a little hunchbacked. Honestly, I never tire of admiring her grace on those rare occasions when I meet her in museums at opening days (everyone meets there, that's why they are cultural holidays).

And one more thing, and perhaps the most important thing: be truthful. The one who seeks to deceive others is first of all deceived himself. He naively thinks that they believed him, but those around him were actually just polite. But a lie always betrays itself, a lie is always "felt", and you not only become disgusting, worse - you are funny.

Don't be funny! Truthfulness is beautiful, even if you admit that you cheated on some occasion, and explain why you did it. This will correct the situation. You will be respected and you will show your mind.

Simplicity and “silence” in a person, truthfulness, lack of pretensions in dress and behavior - this is the most attractive “form” in a person, which also becomes his most elegant “content”.

Letter Nine

WHEN SHOULD I GET OFFENSE?

You should be offended only when they want to offend you. If they don't want to, and the reason for the offense is an accident, then why take offense?

Without getting angry, clear up the misunderstanding - that's all.

Well, what if they want to offend? Before responding to an offense with an offense, it is worth considering: should one stoop to an offense? After all, the offense usually lies somewhere low and you should bend down to it to pick it up.

If you still decide to be offended, then first perform some kind of mathematical action - subtraction, division, etc. Let's say you were insulted for something you are only partly to blame. Subtract anything that doesn't apply to you from your feelings of resentment. Suppose that you were offended out of noble motives - divide your feelings into noble motives that caused an offensive remark, etc. Having performed some necessary mathematical operation in your mind, you can respond to the offense with great dignity, which will be the more noble than the less value you attach to the offense. To certain limits, of course.

In general, excessive resentment is a sign of a lack of intelligence or some kind of complexion. Be smart.

There is a good English rule: to be offended only when they want to offend you, they deliberately hurt you. There is no need to take offense at simple inattention, forgetfulness (sometimes characteristic of a given person by age, for any psychological deficiencies). On the contrary, show special attentiveness to such a “forgetful” person - it will be beautiful and noble.

This is if they “offend” you, but what about when you yourself can offend another? You need to be especially careful with touchy people. Resentment is a very painful character trait.

Letter ten

HONOR TRUE AND FALSE

I do not like definitions and often am not ready for them. But I can point out some of the differences between conscience and honor.

There is one significant difference between conscience and honor. Conscience always comes from the depths of the soul, and conscience is purified to some extent. Conscience "gnaws". Conscience is never wrong. It can be muted or too exaggerated (extremely rare). But beliefs about honor can be completely false, and these false beliefs cause colossal damage to society. I mean what is called "the honor of the uniform." We have disappeared such an unusual phenomenon in our society as the concept of noble honor, but the "honor of the uniform" remains a heavy burden. As if the man had died, and only the uniform remained, from which the orders were removed. And inside which the conscientious heart no longer beats.

"Honor of the uniform" forces the leaders to defend false or vicious projects, insist on the continuation of obviously unsuccessful construction projects, fight against the societies protecting monuments ("our construction is more important"), etc. There are many examples of such defense of "honor of the uniform".

True honor is always in accordance with conscience. False honor - a mirage in the desert, in the moral desert of the human (or rather, "bureaucratic") soul.

Letter eleventh

ABOUT CAREERISM

A person develops from the first day of his birth. He is looking into the future. He learns, learns to set himself new tasks, without even realizing it. And how quickly he masters his position in life. Already he knows how to hold a spoon, and pronounce the first words.

Then he also learns as a boy and a youth.

And the time is already coming to apply your knowledge, to achieve what you were striving for. Maturity. We must live in the present ...

But the acceleration persists, and now instead of learning comes the time for many to master the situation in life. The movement is by inertia. A person is constantly striving towards the future, and the future is no longer in real knowledge, not in mastering skill, but in arranging himself in an advantageous position. The content, the original content, has been lost. The present time does not come, there is still an empty striving for the future. This is careerism. Internal anxiety that makes a person unhappy personally and intolerable for others.

Letter twelfth

A HUMAN MUST BE INTELLIGENT

A person must be intelligent! And if his profession does not require intelligence? And if he could not get an education: this is how the circumstances developed. What if the environment doesn't allow it? And if intelligence makes him a "black sheep" among his colleagues, friends, relatives, will it simply interfere with his rapprochement with other people?

No, no and NO! Intelligence is needed under all circumstances. It is needed both for others and for the person himself.

This is very, very important, and above all in order to live happily and for a long time - yes, long! For intelligence is equal to moral health, and health is necessary in order to live long - not only physically, but also mentally. One old book says: "Honor your father and your mother, and you will be long on earth." This applies to both the whole nation and the individual. This is wise.

But first of all, let us define what intelligence is, and then why it is associated with the commandment of longevity.

Many people think: an intelligent person is one who has read a lot, received a good education (and even mostly humanitarian), traveled a lot, knows several languages.

And yet you can have all this and be unintelligent, and you can not possess anything to a large extent, but still be an internally intelligent person.

Education should not be confused with intelligence. Education lives with the old content, intelligence - the creation of the new and the awareness of the old as new.

Moreover ... Deprive a truly intelligent person of all his knowledge, education, deprive him of his very memory. Let him forget everything in the world, he will not know the classics of literature, he will not remember the greatest works of art, he will forget the most important historical events, but if, with all this, he retains sensitivity to intellectual values, love of acquiring knowledge, interest in history, aesthetic flair, he will be able to distinguish a real work of art from a crude "contraption" made just to surprise if he can admire the beauty of nature, understand the character and personality of another person, enter his position, and, having understood another person, help him, will not show rudeness, indifference, gloating , envy, and will appreciate the other if he shows respect for the culture of the past, the skills of a well-mannered person, responsibility in solving moral issues, the richness and accuracy of his language - spoken and written - this will be an intelligent person.

I knew peasants in the Russian North who were truly intelligent. They observed amazing cleanliness in their homes, knew how to appreciate good songs, knew how to tell "past" (that is, what happened to them or others), lived an orderly way of life, were hospitable and welcoming, were sympathetic to the grief of others, and to someone else's joy.

Intelligence is the ability to understand, to perceive, it is a tolerant attitude towards the world and towards people.

Intelligence must be developed in oneself, trained - to train mental strength, just as physical strength is trained. A. training is possible and necessary in any conditions.

That physical strength training promotes longevity is understandable. Much less understands that for longevity it is also necessary to train spiritual and mental strength.

The fact is that a spiteful and angry reaction to the environment, rudeness and misunderstanding of others is a sign of mental and spiritual weakness, human inability to live ... Pushing in a crowded bus is a weak and nervous person, exhausted, reacting incorrectly to everything. Quarreling with neighbors is also a person who cannot live, deaf mentally. The aesthetically unresponsive person is also an unhappy person. Not knowing how to understand another person, attributing only evil intentions to him, eternally offended by others - this is also a person who impoverishes his life and prevents others from living. Mental weakness leads to physical weakness. I am not a doctor, but I am convinced of this. Long experience has convinced me of this.

Friendliness and kindness make a person not only physically healthy, but also beautiful. Yes, exactly beautiful.

A person's face, distorted by anger, becomes ugly, and the movements of an evil person are devoid of grace - not deliberate grace, but natural, which is much more expensive.

The social duty of a person is to be intelligent. It is a duty to oneself. This is a guarantee of his personal happiness and an "aura of benevolence" around him and towards him (that is, addressed to him).

Everything I talk about with young readers in this book is a call to intelligence, to physical and moral health, to the beauty of health. We will be long as people and as people! And reverence for the father and mother should be understood broadly - as reverence for all our best in the past, in the past, which is the father and mother of our modernity, great modernity, to which it is great happiness.

DEAR FRIENDS!

Before you is the book "Letters about the Good and the Beautiful" by one of the outstanding scientists of our time, the chairman of the Soviet Cultural Foundation, Academician Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev. These "letters" are not addressed to anyone in particular, but to all readers. First of all - young people who still have to learn life, to follow its difficult paths.

And the advice that you can get by reading this book applies to almost all aspects of life.

This is a collection of wisdom, this is the speech of a benevolent Teacher, whose pedagogical tact and the ability to speak with students is one of his main talents.

The book was first published in our publishing house in 1985 and has already become a bibliographic rarity - this is evidenced by the numerous letters we receive from readers.

This book is being translated in different countries, translated into many languages.

Here is what D.S.Likhachev himself writes in the preface to the Japanese edition, in which he explains why this book was written:

“In my deep conviction, goodness and beauty are one for all peoples. They are one in two senses: truth and beauty are eternal companions, they are one among themselves and are the same for all peoples.

Lying is evil for everyone. Sincerity and truthfulness, honesty and unselfishness are always good.

I will be happy if the reader, no matter what age he belongs to (it happens that adults also read children's books), will find in my letters at least a part of what he can agree with.

Consent between people, different nations is the most precious and now the most necessary for humanity. "

LETTERS TO YOUNG READERS

First letter

LARGE IN SMALL

If a person has a great goal, then it should manifest itself in everything - in the seemingly insignificant. You have to be honest in the inconspicuous and accidental: only then will you be honest in fulfilling your great duty. A great goal embraces the whole person, is reflected in his every action, and one should not think that a good goal can be achieved by bad means.

The adage “the end justifies the means” is destructive and immoral. Dostoevsky showed this well in Crime and Punishment. The main character of this work, Rodion Raskolnikov, thought that by killing a disgusting old woman-usurer, he would get money, with which he could then achieve great goals and benefit mankind, but suffers an internal collapse. The goal is distant and unrealizable, but the crime is real; it is terrible and cannot be justified by anything. It is impossible to strive for a high goal with low means. You have to be equally honest in both big and small.

The general rule: to observe the big in the small is necessary, in particular, in science. Scientific truth is the most precious thing, and it must be followed in all the details of scientific research and in the life of a scientist. If one strives in science for “small” goals - for proving by “force”, contrary to the facts, for the “interestingness” of conclusions, for their effectiveness or for any form of self-advancement, then the scientist inevitably fails. Maybe not immediately, but eventually! When exaggerations of the research results obtained or even minor juggling of facts begin and scientific truth is pushed into the background, science ceases to exist, and the scientist himself sooner or later ceases to be a scientist.

The big must be resolutely observed in everything. Then everything is easy and simple.

Second letter

YOUTH IS ALL LIFE

Both in youth and old age. Good habits of youth will make life easier, bad habits will complicate and complicate it.

And further. There is a Russian proverb: "Take care of your honor from your youth." All actions committed in youth remain in the memory. The good ones will delight, the bad ones will keep you awake!

Third letter

THE BIGGEST

What is the biggest goal of life? I think: to increase the goodness in the environment around us. And good is, first of all, the happiness of all people. It is composed of many things, and every time life presents a person with a task that is important to be able to solve. You can do good to a person in small things, you can think about big things, but small and big things cannot be separated. Much, as I have already said, begins with small things, arises in childhood and in close ones.

Letter eleventh

About careerism

"Letters about good and beautiful"

Then he also learns as a boy and a youth.

And the time is already coming to apply your knowledge, to achieve what you were striving for. Maturity. We must live in the present ...

But the acceleration persists, and now instead of learning comes the time for many to master the situation in life. The movement is by inertia. A person is constantly striving towards the future, and the future is no longer in real knowledge, not in mastering skill, but in arranging himself in an advantageous position. The content, the original content, has been lost. The present time does not come, there is still an empty striving for the future. This is careerism. An inner anxiety that makes a person unhappy personally and unbearable for others.

Letter twelfth

A person must be intelligent

A person must be intelligent! And if his profession does not require intelligence? And if he could not get an education: was this the case? What if the environment doesn't allow it? And if intelligence makes him a "black sheep" among his colleagues, friends, relatives, will it simply interfere with his rapprochement with other people?

No, no and NO! Intelligence is needed under all circumstances. It is needed both for others and for the person himself.

But first of all, let us define what intelligence is, and then why it is associated with the commandment of longevity.

Many people think: an intelligent person is one who has read a lot, received a good education (and even mostly humanitarian), traveled a lot, knows several languages.

And yet you can have all this and be unintelligent, and you can not possess anything to a large extent, but still be an internally intelligent person.

Education should not be confused with intelligence. Education lives with the old content, intelligence - the creation of the new and the awareness of the old as new.

Intelligence is the ability to understand, to perceive, it is a tolerant attitude towards the world and towards people.

Intelligence must be developed in oneself, trained - to train mental strength, just as physical strength is trained. And training is possible and necessary in any conditions.

That physical strength training promotes longevity is understandable. Much less understands that for longevity it is also necessary to train spiritual and mental strength.

The fact is that a spiteful and angry reaction to the environment, rudeness and misunderstanding of others is a sign of mental and spiritual weakness, a human inability to live ... Pushing in a crowded bus is a weak and nervous person, exhausted, reacting incorrectly to everything. Quarreling with neighbors is also a person who cannot live, deaf mentally. The aesthetically unresponsive person is also an unhappy person. Not knowing how to understand another person, attributing only evil intentions to him, always taking offense at others - this is also a person who impoverishes his life and interferes with the life of others. Mental weakness leads to physical weakness. I am not a doctor, but I am convinced of this. Long experience has convinced me of this.

Friendliness and kindness make a person not only physically healthy, but also beautiful. Yes, exactly beautiful.

A person's face, distorted by anger, becomes ugly, and the movements of an evil person are devoid of grace - not deliberate grace, but natural, which is much more expensive.

The social duty of a person is to be intelligent. It is a duty to oneself. This is a guarantee of his personal happiness and an “aura of benevolence” around him and towards him (that is, addressed to him).

Letter twenty-two

Love to read!

Each person is obliged (I emphasize - is obliged) to take care of his intellectual development. This is his duty to the society in which he lives and to himself.

The main (but, of course, not the only) way of one's intellectual development is reading.

Reading should not be casual. This is a huge waste of time, and time is the greatest value that should not be wasted on trifles. One should read according to the program, of course, without following it rigidly, moving away from it where there are additional interests for the reader. However, with all deviations from the original program, it is necessary to draw up a new one for oneself, taking into account the new interests that have appeared.

Reading, for it to be effective, must interest the reader. Interest in reading in general or in certain branches of culture must be developed in oneself. Interest can be largely the result of self-education.
Writing reading programs for yourself is not so easy, and you need to do this with the advice of knowledgeable people, with existing reference materials of various types.

The danger of reading is the development (conscious or unconscious) in oneself of a tendency to "diagonal" viewing of texts or to various types of high-speed reading methods.

Speed \u200b\u200breading creates the appearance of knowledge. It can be tolerated only in certain types of professions, being careful not to create a habit of speed reading, it leads to attention disease.

Have you noticed what a great impression those works of literature make that are read in a calm, unhurried and unhurried environment, for example, on vacation or with some not very complex and not distracting illness?

“Teaching is hard when we cannot find joy in it. It is necessary to choose forms of recreation and entertainment that are smart, capable of teaching "

"Disinterested" but interesting reading is what makes you love literature and what broadens a person's horizons.

Why is the TV partially replacing the book now? Yes, because the TV makes you slowly watch some kind of program, sit down more comfortably so that nothing bothers you, it distracts you from worries, it dictates to you how to watch and what to watch. But try to choose a book to your liking, take a break from everything in the world for a while, sit comfortably with the book, and you will understand that there are many books you cannot live without, which are more important and more interesting than many programs. I'm not saying stop watching TV. But I say: look with a choice. Spend your time on what is worth it. Read more and read with the greatest selection. Determine your choice yourself, in accordance with the role that the book you have chosen has acquired in the history of human culture in order to become a classic. This means that there is something essential in it. Or maybe this essential for the culture of humanity will turn out to be essential for you as well?

The classic is one that has stood the test of time. With it you will not waste your time. But the classics cannot answer all the questions of today. Therefore, it is necessary to read contemporary literature as well. Don't just throw yourself at every fancy book. Don't be fussy. Vanity makes a person recklessly spend the greatest and most precious capital that he possesses - his time.

Letter twenty-six

Learn to learn!

We are entering an age in which education, knowledge, professional skills will play a decisive role in a person's destiny. Without knowledge, by the way, all becoming more complicated, it will simply be impossible to work and be useful. For physical labor will be undertaken by machines, robots. Even calculations will be done by computers, just like blueprints, calculations, reports, planning, etc. A person will bring in new ideas, think about what a machine cannot think about. And for this, the general intelligence of man, his ability to create new things and, of course, moral responsibility, which the machine cannot bear, will be needed more and more. Ethics, simple in the preceding centuries, will become infinitely more complex in the age of science. It is clear. This means that a person will face the hardest and most difficult task of not being just a person, but a person of science, a person morally responsible for everything that happens in the age of machines and robots. General education can create a person of the future, a creative person, a creator of everything new and morally responsible for everything that will be created.

Teaching is what a young man needs now from a very young age. You should always learn. Until the end of life, not only taught, but studied all the major scientists. If you stop learning, you won't be able to teach. For knowledge is growing and becoming more complex. It must be remembered that the most favorable time for learning is youth. It is in youth, in childhood, in adolescence, in youth that the mind of a person is most receptive. He is receptive to the study of languages \u200b\u200b(which is extremely important), to mathematics, to the assimilation of simple knowledge and the development of aesthetic, which stands next to moral development and partially stimulates it.

Know how not to waste time on trifles, on "rest", which sometimes tires more than the hardest work, do not fill your bright mind with muddy streams of stupid and aimless "information". Take care of yourself for learning, for acquiring knowledge and skills that you will learn quickly and easily only in your youth.

And here I hear the heavy sigh of a young man: what a boring life you offer our youth! Just learn. And where is the rest, entertainment? What, then, should we not rejoice?

No. The acquisition of skills and knowledge is the same sport. Teaching is hard when we cannot find joy in it. We must love to study and choose smart forms of recreation and entertainment, capable of also teaching something, developing in us some abilities that will be needed in life.

And if you don't like studying? It cannot be. This means that you simply did not discover the joy that the acquisition of knowledge and skills brings to a child, boy, girl.

Look at a small child - with what pleasure he begins to learn to walk, talk, delve into various mechanisms (for boys), and nurse dolls (for girls). Try to continue this joy of learning new things. It largely depends on yourself. Do not promise: I do not like to study! And you try to love all the subjects that you pass in school. If other people liked them, why might you not like them! Read worthwhile books, not just reading. Study history and literature. An intelligent person should know both well. They give a person a moral and aesthetic outlook, make the world around him large, interesting, radiating experience and joy. If you don’t like something in any subject, strain and try to find in it a source of joy - the joy of acquiring something new.

Learn to love learning!

The publishing house thanks Vera Sergeevna Tolts-Zilitinkevich for the photographs provided

Part 1
Good Letters

Letters to Young Readers

First letter
Big in small

In the material world, you cannot fit the big into the small, but in the sphere of spiritual values \u200b\u200bit is not so: the small can fit much more, and if you try to fit the small into the big, then the big will simply cease to exist.

If a person has a great goal, then it should manifest itself in everything - in the seemingly insignificant. You have to be honest in what is inconspicuous and accidental, then only you will be honest in fulfilling your great duty. A great goal embraces the whole person, is reflected in his every action, and one should not think that a good goal can be achieved by bad means.

The adage “the end justifies the means” is destructive and immoral. Dostoevsky showed this well in Crime and Punishment. The main character of this work, Rodion Raskolnikov, thought that by killing a disgusting old woman-usurer, he would get money, with which he could then achieve great goals and benefit mankind, but suffers an internal collapse. The goal is distant and unrealizable, but the crime is real; it is terrible and cannot be justified by anything. It is impossible to strive for a high goal with low means. You have to be equally honest in both big and small.

The general rule: to observe the big in the small is necessary, in particular, in science. Scientific truth is the most precious thing, and it must be followed in all the details of scientific research and in the life of a scientist. If one strives in science for "small" goals - for proof by "force", contrary to the facts, for spectacular results or for any forms of self-advancement, then the scientist inevitably fails. Maybe not immediately, but eventually! When exaggerations of the research results obtained or even minor juggling of facts begin and scientific truth is pushed into the background, science ceases to exist, and the scientist himself sooner or later ceases to be a scientist.

To observe the big in the small must be resolute in everything. Then everything is easy and simple.

Second letter
Youth is all life

Both in youth and old age. Good habits of youth will make life easier, bad habits will complicate and complicate it.

And further. There is a Russian proverb: "Take care of your honor from your youth." All actions committed in youth remain in the memory. The good ones will delight, the bad ones will not let you sleep!

Third letter
The biggest

What is the biggest goal of life? I think: to increase the goodness in the environment around us. And good is, first of all, the happiness of all people. It is composed of many things, and every time life presents a person with a task that is important to be able to solve. You can do good to a person in small things, you can think about big things, but small and big things cannot be separated. Much, as I said, begins with little things, arises in childhood and among loved ones.

The child loves his mother and his father, brothers and sisters, his family, his home. Gradually expanding, his affections spread to school, village, city, the whole country. And this is already a very big and deep feeling, although one cannot stop there and one must love a person in a person.

You have to be a patriot, not a nationalist. You can't, there is no need to hate someone else's family, because you love yours. There is no need to hate other nations because you are a patriot. There is a profound difference between patriotism and nationalism. In the first - love for their country, in the second - hatred for all others.

The big goal of good begins with a small one - with the desire for good for one's loved ones, but, expanding, it captures an ever wider range of issues.

Wisdom is intelligence combined with kindness. A mind without kindness is cunning. Cunning, however, certainly sooner or later turns against the cunning one. Therefore, the cunning is forced to hide. Wisdom is open and reliable. She does not deceive others, and above all the wisest person. Wisdom brings the sage a good name and lasting happiness, brings happiness, reliable, long-term and that calm conscience, which is most valuable in old age.

How can I express the commonality between my three positions: "Big in small", "Youth is all life" and "The greatest"? It can be expressed in one word that can become the motto: "Loyalty." Loyalty to those great principles that a person should be guided by in big and small, loyalty to his impeccable youth, to his homeland in the broad and in the narrow sense of this concept, loyalty to family, friends, city, country, people. Ultimately, fidelity is fidelity to truth - truth-truth and truth-justice.

The fourth letter
The greatest value is life

Life is primarily breathing. "Soul", "spirit"! And he died - first of all - "stopped breathing." So they thought from time immemorial. "Ghost out!" - it means "died".

It is stuffy in the house, "stuffy" and in moral life. You should thoroughly "exhale" all the petty worries, all the vanity of everyday life, get rid of, shake off everything that impedes the movement of thought, that crushes the soul, does not allow a person to accept life, its values, its beauty.

A person should always think about the most important for himself and for others, throwing off all empty worries.

We need to be open to people, tolerant of people, to look for the best in them first of all. The ability to seek and find the best, just good, "hidden beauty" enriches a person spiritually.

Noticing beauty in nature, in a village, in a city, not to mention in a person, through all the barriers of little things, means to expand the sphere of life, the sphere of that vital space in which a person lives.

I have been looking for this word for a long time - "sphere". At first I said to myself: “We need to expand the boundaries of life,” but life has no boundaries! This is not a land plot enclosed by a fence - borders. “Expanding the limits of life” is not suitable for expressing my thoughts for the same reason. “Expanding the horizons of life” is already better, but still something is not right. Maximilian Voloshin loved a good word - "eye". This is all that the eye contains, that it can grasp. But even here the limitations of our everyday knowledge interfere. Life cannot be reduced to everyday impressions. We must be able to feel and even notice what is beyond our perception, to have, as it were, a “presentiment” of something new that is opening up or that can open up to us. The greatest value in the world is life: someone else's, one's own, the life of the animal world and plants, the life of culture, life throughout its entire length - both in the past, in the present, and in the future ... And life is infinitely deep. We always meet with something that we did not notice before, that amazes us with its beauty, unexpected wisdom, and uniqueness.

The fifth letter
What is a sense of life

You can define the goal of your existence in different ways, but the goal must be - otherwise it will not be life, but vegetation.

You must also have principles in life. It is good even to state them in a diary, but in order for the diary to be "real", you should not show it to anyone - write for yourself only.

Every person should have one rule in life, in his purpose of life, in his principles of life, in his behavior: one must live life with dignity, so that he would not be ashamed to remember.

Dignity requires kindness, generosity, the ability not to be a narrow egoist, to be truthful, a good friend, to find joy in helping others.

In deceiving, a person first of all deceives himself, for he thinks that he has successfully lied, but people understood and, out of delicacy, kept silent. Lies are always visible. A special feeling tells people whether they are lying or telling the truth. But sometimes there is no evidence, and more often - you don't want to get involved ...

Nature has been creating man for many millions of years, and this creative, constructive activity of nature must, I think, be respected, one must live a life with dignity, and live so that nature, working on our creation, is not offended. We must in our life support this creative tendency, the creativity of nature and in no case support everything that is destructive in life. How to understand this, how to apply it to your life - each person must respond to this individually, in relation to their abilities, their interests, etc. But you need to live by creating, to maintain creativity in life. Life is diverse, and therefore, creation is diverse, and our aspirations for creativity in life should also be diverse to the extent of our abilities and inclinations. How do you think?

There is some level of happiness in life, from which we count, as we count the height from sea level.

Starting point. So, the task of each person, both large and small, is to increase this level of happiness. And personal happiness also does not remain outside these concerns. But mainly - those around you, those who are closer to you, whose level of happiness can be increased simply, easily, without worries. And besides, it means increasing the level of happiness of your country and of all mankind, in the end.

The methods are different, but for everyone there is something available. If the solution of state issues is not available, which always increases the level of happiness, if they are wisely resolved, then this level of happiness can be increased within the limits of your work environment, within your school, among your friends and comrades. Everyone has such an opportunity.

Life is, first of all, creativity, but this does not mean that every person, in order to live, must be born as an artist, ballerina or scientist. Creativity can also be created. You can create just a kind atmosphere around yourself, as they say now, an aura of goodness around you. For example, a person can bring with him an atmosphere of suspicion, a kind of painful silence into society, or he can immediately bring joy and light. This is creativity. Creativity is continuous. So life is the eternal creation. A person is born and leaves behind a memory. What memory will he leave behind? This should be taken care of not only from a certain age, but, I think, from the very beginning, since a person can die at any moment and at any moment. And it is very important what kind of memory he leaves about himself.

Letter six
Goal and self-esteem

When a person consciously or intuitively chooses a goal, a life task for himself in life, he at the same time involuntarily evaluates himself. By what a person lives for, one can judge his self-esteem - low or high.

Only a vital goal allows a person to live his life with dignity and receive real joy. Yes, joy! Think: if a person sets himself the task of increasing goodness in life, bringing people happiness, what failures can befall him? Not the one who should be helped? But how many people don't need help? If you are a doctor, then, perhaps, you misdiagnosed the patient? This happens with the best doctors. But in total, you still helped more than you did not. No one is immune from mistakes. But the most important mistake, a fatal mistake, is the wrongly chosen main task in life. Not promoted - chagrin. I didn't have time to buy a stamp for my collection - it was a shame. Someone has a better furniture than you, or a better car - again a grief, and what a great deal!

Setting himself the task of a career or an acquisition, a person experiences in total much more grief than joys, and risks losing everything. And what can a person lose if he rejoiced in every good deed? It is only important that the good that a person does should be his inner need, come from an intelligent heart, and not just from the head, it would not be just one “principle”.

Does this mean that a person should live like an ascetic, not take care of himself, not acquire anything and not rejoice in a simple promotion? Not at all! A person who does not think about himself at all is an abnormal phenomenon and personally unpleasant for me: there is some kind of breakdown in this, some kind of ostentatious exaggeration of his kindness, disinterestedness, significance, there is some kind of contempt for other people, a desire stand out.

Seventh letter
What unites people

Care floors. Caring strengthens relationships between people. It strengthens the family, strengthens friendship, holds fellow villagers, residents of one city, one country together.

Track a person's life.

Gradually, children become objects of ever higher care and they themselves begin to show real and broad care - not only about the family, but also about the school, about their village, city and country ...

If care is directed only to oneself, then an egoist grows up.

Caring unites people, strengthens the memory of the past and is directed entirely towards the future. This is not the feeling itself - it is a concrete manifestation of the feeling of love, friendship, patriotism. A person should be caring. A careless or carefree person is most likely an unkind person who does not love anyone.

Morality is highly compassionate. In compassion there is a consciousness of one's unity with humanity and the world (not only with people, nations, but also with animals, plants, nature, etc.). The feeling of compassion (or something close to it) makes us fight for cultural monuments, for their preservation, for nature, individual landscapes, for respect for memory. In compassion there is a consciousness of one's unity with other people, with a nation, people, country. The universe. That is why the forgotten concept of compassion requires its complete revival and development.

Surprisingly correct thought: "A small step for man, a big step for mankind." There are thousands of examples of this: it costs nothing to be kind to one person, but it is incredibly difficult for humanity to become kind. It is impossible to correct humanity; it is easy to correct yourself. Feeding a child, transferring an old man across the road, making way for a seat on a tram, working well, being polite and courteous, etc., etc. - all this is simple for a person, but incredibly difficult for everyone at once. That's why you need to start with yourself.

Good cannot be stupid. A good deed is never stupid, because it is selfless and does not pursue the goal of profit and "smart result". You can call a good deed "stupid" only when it clearly could not achieve the goal or was "falsely kind", mistakenly kind, that is, not kind. I repeat: a truly good deed cannot be stupid, it is beyond evaluations from the point of view of the mind or not the mind. So good and good.

Eighth letter
Be funny, but not funny

But how funny should you be? Noisy and obsessive fun is exhausting for others. The young man who is always pouring out witticisms is no longer perceived as being worthy of himself. He becomes a jester. And this is the worst thing that can happen to a person in society, and this means ultimately the loss of a sense of humor.

Don't be funny.

Not being funny is not only the ability to behave, but also a sign of intelligence.

You can be funny in everything, even in the manner of dress. If a man chooses too carefully a tie to a shirt, a shirt to a suit - he is ridiculous. Excessive concern for your appearance is immediately visible. We must take care of dressing decently, but this concern for men should not go beyond certain boundaries. A man who is overly concerned about his appearance is unpleasant. A woman is another matter. Men, on the other hand, should only have a hint of fashion in their clothes. A perfectly clean shirt, clean shoes and a fresh but not very bright tie are enough. The suit can be old, it just doesn't have to be untidy.

In a conversation with others, be able to listen, be silent, be able to joke, but rarely and on time. Take up as little space as possible. Therefore, at lunch, do not put your elbows on the table, embarrassing your neighbor. Do not try too hard to be the "soul of society" Observe the measure in everything, do not be intrusive even with your friendly feelings.

Don't be tormented by your shortcomings, if you have them. If you stutter, don't think it's too bad. Stutterers are excellent speakers, considering every word they say. The best lecturer of the historian V.O.Klyuchevsky, famous for its eloquent professors of Moscow University, stuttered. A slight squint can give importance to the face, lameness to movement. And if you are shy, then don't be afraid of it. Don't be ashamed of your shyness: shyness is very cute and not funny at all. It only becomes funny if you try too hard to overcome it and feel shy about it. Be simple and condescending to your shortcomings. Don't suffer from them. It is not worse when an "inferiority complex" develops in a person, and with it anger, hostility towards others, envy. A person loses what is best in him - kindness.

There is no better music than silence, silence in the mountains, silence in the forest. There is no better “music in a person” than modesty and the ability to keep quiet, not to come out on top. There is nothing more unpleasant and stupid in a person's appearance and behavior than importance or noisiness; there is nothing more funny in a man than excessive concern for his costume and hairstyle, calculated movements and a "fountain of witticisms" and anecdotes, especially if they are repeated.

In behavior, be afraid to be funny and try to be modest, quiet.

Never dismiss, always be equal with people, respect the people around you.

Don't be afraid of your physical disabilities. Be dignified and you will be elegant.

I have a girlfriend, a little hunchbacked. Honestly, I never tire of admiring her grace on those rare occasions when I meet her in museums at opening days (everyone meets there - that's why they are cultural holidays).

Simplicity and "silence" in a person, truthfulness, lack of pretensions in dress and behavior - this is the most attractive "form" in a person, which becomes his most elegant "content".

It might be useful to read:

26 letter from Likhachev. Letters to Young Readers. Letter twenty-nine

1. The first letter LARGE IN SMALL

2. The second letter YOUTH IS ALL LIFE

3. The third letter THE BIGGEST

4. Letter four THE GREATEST VALUE LIFE

5. Letter five WHAT IS A SENSE OF LIFE

6. Letter six PURPOSE AND SELF-ASSESSMENT

7. The seventh letter WHAT UNITS PEOPLE

8. The eighth letter BE FUN BUT DON'T BE FUNNY

9. Letter Nine WHEN SHOULD I GET OFFENSE?

10. Letter ten HONOR TRUE AND FALSE

11. Letter eleventh ABOUT CAREERISM

12. Letter twelfth A HUMAN MUST BE INTELLIGENT

13. Letter Thirteenth About upbringing

14. Letter fourteenth OF BAD AND GOOD INFLUENCES

15. Letter fifteenth ABOUT ENVY

16. Letter sixteenth ABOUT GREEDY

17. Letter seventeenth Be able to argue with dignity

18. Letter Eighteenth THE ART OF WRONG

19. Letter Nineteenth HOW TO SAY?

20. Letter Twentieth HOW TO SPEAK?

21. Letter twenty-one HOW TO WRITE?

22. Letter twenty-two LOVE TO READ!

23. Letter twenty-third ABOUT PERSONAL LIBRARIES

25. Letter twenty-five By the command of conscience

26. Letter twenty-six LEARN LEARN!

27. Letter twenty-seventh FOURTH DIMENSION

28. Letter Twenty-Eighth BE TOGETHER

29. Letter twenty-ninth TRAVEL!

30. Letter thirtieth MORAL TOP AND ATTITUDE TO THEM

31. Letter thirty-one CIRCLE OF MORAL SETTLEMENT

32. Letter thirty-second UNDERSTAND THE ART

33. Letter thirty-third ABOUT HUMAN IN ART

34. Letter thirty-fourth ABOUT RUSSIAN NATURE

35. Letter thirty-fifth ABOUT RUSSIAN LANDSCAPE PAINTING

36. Letter thirty-six NATURE OF OTHER COUNTRIES

37. Letter thirty-seventh ENSEMBLES OF ART MONUMENTS

38. Letter Thirty-Eighth GARDENS AND PARKS

39. Letter thirty-ninth THE NATURE OF RUSSIA AND PUSHKIN

40. Letter fortieth ABOUT MEMORY

41. Letter forty-first MEMORY OF CULTURE

42. Letter forty-second KNOW THE BEAUTY OF OUR CITIES AND VILLAGES

43. Letter forty-third MORE ABOUT MONUMENTS OF THE PAST

44. Letter forty-fourth ABOUT THE ART OF WORD AND PHILOLOGY

45. Letter Forty-Five SPACE HERMITAGE

46. \u200b\u200bLetter forty-six WAYS OF KIND

About careerism

A person must be intelligent

Love to read!

“Teaching is hard when we cannot find joy in it. It is necessary to choose forms of recreation and entertainment that are smart, capable of teaching "

Learn to learn!

Part 1 Good Letters

Letters to Young Readers

First letter Big in small

Second letter Youth is all life

Third letter The biggest

The fourth letter The greatest value is life

The fifth letter What is a sense of life

Letter six Goal and self-esteem

Seventh letter What unites people

Eighth letter Be funny, but not funny

1. The first letter
LARGE IN SMALL

2. The second letter
YOUTH IS ALL LIFE

3. The third letter
THE BIGGEST

4. Letter four
THE GREATEST VALUE LIFE

5. Letter five
WHAT IS A SENSE OF LIFE

6. Letter six
PURPOSE AND SELF-ASSESSMENT

7. The seventh letter
WHAT UNITS PEOPLE

8. The eighth letter
BE FUN BUT DON'T BE FUNNY

9. Letter Nine
WHEN SHOULD I GET OFFENSE?

10. Letter ten
HONOR TRUE AND FALSE

11. Letter eleventh
ABOUT CAREERISM

12. Letter twelfth
A HUMAN MUST BE INTELLIGENT

13. Letter Thirteenth
About upbringing

14. Letter fourteenth
OF BAD AND GOOD INFLUENCES

15. Letter fifteenth
ABOUT ENVY

16. Letter sixteenth
ABOUT GREEDY

17. Letter seventeenth
Be able to argue with dignity

18. Letter Eighteenth
THE ART OF WRONG

19. Letter Nineteenth
HOW TO SAY?

20. Letter Twentieth
HOW TO SPEAK?

21. Letter twenty-one
HOW TO WRITE?

22. Letter twenty-two
LOVE TO READ!

23. Letter twenty-third
ABOUT PERSONAL LIBRARIES

25. Letter twenty-five
By the command of conscience

26. Letter twenty-six
LEARN LEARN!

27. Letter twenty-seventh
FOURTH DIMENSION

28. Letter Twenty-Eighth
BE TOGETHER

29. Letter twenty-ninth
TRAVEL!

30. Letter thirtieth
MORAL TOP AND ATTITUDE TO THEM

31. Letter thirty-one
CIRCLE OF MORAL SETTLEMENT

32. Letter thirty-second
UNDERSTAND THE ART

33. Letter thirty-third
ABOUT HUMAN IN ART

34. Letter thirty-fourth
ABOUT RUSSIAN NATURE

35. Letter thirty-fifth
ABOUT RUSSIAN LANDSCAPE PAINTING

36. Letter thirty-six
NATURE OF OTHER COUNTRIES

37. Letter thirty-seventh
ENSEMBLES OF ART MONUMENTS

38. Letter Thirty-Eighth
GARDENS AND PARKS

39. Letter thirty-ninth
THE NATURE OF RUSSIA AND PUSHKIN

40. Letter fortieth
ABOUT MEMORY

41. Letter forty-first
MEMORY OF CULTURE

42. Letter forty-second
KNOW THE BEAUTY OF OUR CITIES AND VILLAGES

43. Letter forty-third
MORE ABOUT MONUMENTS OF THE PAST

44. Letter forty-fourth
ABOUT THE ART OF WORD AND PHILOLOGY

45. Letter Forty-Five
SPACE HERMITAGE

46. \u200b\u200bLetter forty-six
WAYS OF KIND

Part 1
Good Letters

First letter
Big in small

Second letter
Youth is all life

Third letter
The biggest

The fourth letter
The greatest value is life

The fifth letter
What is a sense of life

Letter six
Goal and self-esteem

Seventh letter
What unites people

Eighth letter
Be funny, but not funny