PythagorasПифагор

The words shown were found, word for word, in the saved source text. Dictionnaire universel de la langue française (Boiste), s.v. "Insecte".

Found in Boiste's dictionary, the first example under "Insecte", signed "[Pythagore.]": "Punish severely your child guilty of the murder of an insect; it is there that homicide began." Tolstoy changes the punishment into prevention, «Не позволяй своим детям убивать насекомых» (do not let your children kill insects) for "Punis avec sévérité ton enfant coupable du meurtre d'un insecte", and the past into the present, «с этого начинается человекоубийство» (this is where the killing of men begins) for "c'est par là que commença l'homicide" (that is how homicide began). No ancient source was found. The ancient lives of Pythagoras report that he forbade killing animals (Diogenes Laertius VIII.13); the saying about a child and an insect is not in Moralistes anciens (1841), Williams's Ethics of Diet (1883), Southgate, or Conway, and web searches in Russian and English did not find it elsewhere. The day's other entries are on mercy to animals too (Schopenhauer, Muhammad, Manu, the Dhammapada).

The words shown were found, word for word, in the saved source text. Pythagoric Ethical Sentences from Stobaeus, the sixth sentence ("Pythagoras said ..."), in Taylor's collection appended to Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras.

Sentences 2 to 4 of Tolstoy's text are the Pythagorean saying preserved by Stobaeus, here in Taylor's English: "Pythagoras said, it is requisite to choose the most excellent life; for custom will make it pleasant. Wealth is an infirm anchor, glory is still more infirm; and in a similar manner the body, dominion, and honor. For all these are imbecile and powerless. What then are powerful anchors? Prudence, magnanimity, fortitude. These no tempest can shake. This is the law of God, that virtue is the only thing that is strong; and that every thing else is a trifle." Tolstoy follows it closely to "powerless" («всё это ничтожно и бессильно»), adding «решительно» (resolutely) and «для тебя» (for you). He then changes the answer: Stobaeus's three strong anchors, "Prudence, magnanimity, fortitude. These no tempest can shake", become «Только в добродетели» (only in virtue), and "every thing else is a trifle" becomes «всё же остальное — ничто» (all the rest is nothing). The first sentence, «Убедись, что нет у тебя иной собственности, кроме твоей души» (be convinced that you have no property but your soul), is not in this saying or in the other Pythagorean sentences Taylor collects from Stobaeus, Demophilus, Sextus, and Iamblichus's Protrepticus (searched in Firth's reprint, sacred-texts.com, The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, 1904). What Tolstoy read was not found: the saying is not in Moralistes anciens, Boiste, Ramage, or Taylor's Demophilus (1804), and the signature «Пифагор Самосский» suggests a French or English collection that named him so. The Greek, in Stobaeus's Anthology, was not saved.

The words shown were found, word for word, in the saved source text. Golden Verses (Carmen aureum), Pythagorean, lines 68–69.

The close of the Golden Verses: 'consider each thing, setting judgment (γνώμη) above as the best charioteer'. Tolstoy keeps only the maxim ('examine everything, give reason the first place') and drops its context (abstaining from the foods forbidden, the purifications and deliverance of the soul) and the promise that follows (freed from the body, you will be an immortal god). The Verses are a later Pythagorean poem traditionally ascribed to Pythagoras, so the signature is the customary one rather than wrong.