Culture is human labor moved by love. Not forced labor, which is a curse, but free labor, which is a blessing. Attempts to build a life only on materialistic ideas and interests are senseless and fruitless. And no idea can be materialistic: it will always be spiritual, only its direction can be towards truth or falsehood.

A man dressed in the clothes of only one external technical civilization, a man without spiritual values and demands, looks like a dead man. It lacks the most important thing: the spirit of life. Denying the Living God and hissing with hatred for a person other than ourselves, the materialistic pseudo-culture wants to cover the blossoming earth like lava.

And life petrifies where it is covered with this black lava of a utilitarian, materialistic worldview. It is gray, stuffy, and poor in a world where there is only a play of material human interests, but there is no culture of spirit and no culture of love. In the struggle for material value, a person knows how to obtain "his right", but does not always find in this "right" his real, joyful life.

There is a biblical image full of deep, universal meaning: people build a tower to the heavens... They are sure that they will "reach heaven", that is, their human happiness, "making a name for themselves", through the construction of a material tower... "Let's build a tower and be happy," these people think. A pathetic thought!

Can any number of bricks or cars make people better, wiser, kinder and closer to each other, more able to understand and find their happiness? Obsessed with material construction, seeing only in it the goal of their life, people build and build... Generations change, the human tower is still being built, and the earth is more and more flooded with the blood of brothers...

No number of floors of material civilization can pass into the moral quality of life without the inner feat and effort of the human soul and without the blessing of God... Only that on which God's blessing rests has life and existence.

The inner division of people united only by matter and materialism is menacingly revealed in the world.

Those who deny the basis of life, the Spirit of God, and build their culture only on material values and materialistic ideas, will not bring happiness to humanity. The unity of the materialists is illusory. Even fettered by the chains of the most severe compulsion, it can break at any moment and turn into cruel confusion and discord, even into a bestial struggle.

Dostoevsky deeply felt the culture of the spirit, as a culture of faith and love...

Стремясь к последней Христовой правде мира, американец открывает путь к американской культуре, как и русский человек — к русской культуре.

Истинная культура есть связь человека с Творцом и со всем миром. И эта связь называется религией. Это связь с высшим миром бытия, истины и любви должна пройти через все отношения людей и народов. Войти в рояль музыканта, в лабораторию ученого, в тетрадь писателя, в интуицию врача, в руку сеятеля, сеющего на земле хлеб… По холодной проволоке материальных отношений мира должно пробежать тепло жизни. По жилам человечества должна пробежать кровь, соединяющая людей в высшее единство, всё оживляющая и всё отдающая Единому Сердцу — Иисусу Христу.

По культуре добра и духа томится всякое человеческое — и русское — сердце. Напрасно пытаются осуществлять культуру насилием и ненавистью. Она есть дочь любви и свободы.

Народная правда

Народ выражает свою жизнь в эпосе. И это народное голосование более совершенно, чем какое-либо иное. В былинах, сказах и присказках, в бывальщинах и пословицах можно расслышать не только житейскую мудрость, но и глубокую философию духа, теплоту истинной жизни.