1) It always seems to us that we are loved because we are good, but it does not occur to us that we are loved because they who love us are good. This can be seen if you listen to what that miserable, disgusting and vain man says whom with a great effort you have pitied: he says that he is so good you could not have acted otherwise. The same thing, when you are loved. 2) “Lobsters like to be boiled alive.” That is no joke. How often do you hear it, or have said it yourself or are saying it: Man has the capacity of not seeing the suffering which he does not want to see. And he does not want to see the suffering which he himself causes. How often I have heard it said about coachmen who are waiting, about cooks, lackeys, peasants at their work, that they are having a good time--“Lobsters like to be boiled alive.” _Nov. 26. Y. P. If I live._ _To-day, Nov. 28, Y. P._ Two days I haven’t written. I am still busy with _Art_ and the preface to Carpenter.... This morning Makovitsky arrived, a nice, mild, clean man. He told me many joyful things about our friends. I went to Yasenki: a letter from Maude, a good one, and from Grot--not a good one.[255] All these days, have not been in a good mood. How to be in Moscow in such a state? Have been thinking: 1) Often it happens that you are speaking to a man and suddenly he has a tender, happy expression, and he begins to speak to you in such a way that you think he is going to tell you something most joyful, but it turns out--he is speaking about himself. Zakharnin[256] about his operation, Mashenka[257] about her audience with Father Ambrose[258] and his words. When a man speaks about something which is very near to him, he forgets that the other one is not he. If people do not speak about abstract or spiritual things, they all speak necessarily about themselves, and that is terribly tedious. 2) You dash about, struggle--all because you want to swim in your own current. But alongside of you, unceasing and near to every one, there flows the divine and infinite current of love, in one and the same eternal course. When you are thoroughly exhausted in your attempts to do something for yourself, to save yourself, to secure yourself--then drop all your own courses, throw yourself into that current--and it will carry you and you will feel that there are no barriers, that you are at peace forever and free and blessed. 3) Only not to love oneself, one’s very self, one’s own Leo Nicholaievich (Tolstoi)--and you will love both God and people. You are on fire and you can’t help but burn; and burning you will set fire to others and you will fuse with that other fire. To love oneself means to be niggardly with one’s light and to put out the fire.