A Calendar of Wisdom

by Leo Tolstoy, GP Editors (Editor)

“A bedside companion." —USA Today
“A surprisingly powerful book." —The Washington Post
“A self-help book.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
"This book will inspire." —The Sun, London (UK)
"Let's just say that Tolstoy is transcendent, and that we are grateful he lived long enough to endow us with his grand inheritance." —THOMAS KENEALLY, author of Schindler's List

'A Calendar of Wisdom' by Leo Tolstoy is a timeless daily devotional that offers profound spiritual insights for every day of the year. First published in 1904, this carefully curated collection reflects Tolstoy’s deep philosophical and moral inquiries in the final years of his life. Drawing on wisdom from across cultures and centuries—featuring voices such as Socrates, the Bible, Marcus Aurelius, Confucius, and Eastern sages—Tolstoy weaves together a rich tapestry of thought that speaks to the human soul.
Each daily entry is centered around a theme like kindness, death, humility, or purpose, combining excerpts from great thinkers with Tolstoy’s own contemplations. The result is a book that not only nourishes the mind but also calls the reader to live more thoughtfully and ethically.
Unlike Tolstoy’s epic novels, this work is compact and meditative, showing the author’s skill in distilling complex ideas into accessible daily reflections. Banned in the Soviet era but rediscovered in recent decades, A Calendar of Wisdom remains a source of daily inspiration, moral clarity, and inner peace for readers seeking guidance in a chaotic world.

385 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 21, 2025

About the author

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; most appropriately used Liev Tolstoy; commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.

His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.