Dostoevsky’s best writing isn’t his fiction

It’s a letter to his brother — written 30 minutes after a gun was pressed to his head

He explains how cheating death flipped his understanding of life’s meaning:

In a flash he found God, and a fire that fueled his writing career:🧵 As a young adult, Dostoevsky was a radical socialist

He was a member of the Petrashevsky Circle:

A revolutionary group that sought to tear down Russia’s Regime

Many members were extremists. Some even advocated terrorism

Soon, the government caught on…

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was the “writer who took down an empire”

His work Gulag Archipelago details the horrors of life in the USSR, and made a global mockery of the evil regime

Here are some excerpts from Gulag that explain how to destroy an evil empire...🧵 “The object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.”

Solzhenitsyn learned this in prison: tyrants can take everything from you but your soul...

Being virtuous is the ultimate rebellion

You fix the world by fixing yourself

Tolstoy had it all — fame, fortune, and stardom — but it nearly killed him:

He realized he had wasted his life, and wanted to die

Instead, he wrote a little known masterpiece:

It reveals the truth about human nature, the soul, and how to live a life that truly matters…🧵 Tolstoy shared his insights in his novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”

It follows the lucrative career of a lawyer, Ivan Ilyich, who on his death bed, regrets that his life was a waste

The story uses his death to ask, “what does a meaningful life look like?”

Samson is the worst hero of the Bible — an impious warlord ensnared by lust

Yet his fatal flaw was worse than sexual sin

He fell for a timeless snare that has destroyed men throughout history

Here’s the root of Samson’s downfall, and how to avoid the same fate…🧵 Samson was a judge, or military leader of Israel

His birth was providential, preceded by an angel’s announcement:

“You will conceive and give birth to a son…

the boy is to be a Nazirite to God from the womb” (Judg. 13:3–5)

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas is the most inspiring man you’ve never heard of

Born a slave, he went on to become France’s greatest general alongside Napoleon… and that wasn’t even his best achievement!

He actually inspired France’s all time greatest novel, written by his own son…🧵 Dumas was born in Haiti, 1762, of mixed descent

His Father had big ambitions for him to succeed in life, but there was a problem:

Due to his African mother, Dumas was a slave and denied rights

To free him, his father devised the unlikeliest of plans…

The French Revolution was a bloody disaster

Mobs ruled, cities burned, and guillotines roared — how could anyone fight back against such horrors?

Charles Dickens had the answer, and wrote a book all about it:

Here’s his advice on how to stop a Reign of Terror… 🧵 Charles Dickens writes on France’s Reign of Terror in his novel A Tale of Two Cities (spoilers)

Paris was wrought with revolutionary violence:

One false accusation could label you an “enemy of the revolution,” and send you to the guillotine

But what drove this hysteria?

Orwell, Huxley, and Nabokov were all inspired by one banned book

It laid the foundation for every great dystopian novel of the 20th century:

Including 1984 and Brave New World

Here’s the novel behind all dystopian literature, and what it teaches you about tyranny today…🧵 Yevgeny Zamyatin pioneered dystopian literature with his novel “We”

It follows a futuristic society, run by an authoritarian government called the One State

The government celebrates one ideal above all costs:

Social Order, by any means necessary

Few novels were quite as controversial as Dostoevsky’s The Demons

Publishers censored the story — they said it was vile and graphic

Dostoevsky said it was brutal, but necessary

Here’s what he wrote, and why it was deemed too dangerous for print…🧵 Demons is Dostoevsky’s famous warning against nihilism

He equates nihilism to a “demon,” that drives humanity to destruction…

The story takes place in a quaint Russian village

All is peaceful to start, but after two nihilists show up, strange things begin to occur

Freud got Oedipus wrong

The myth is not about inc*st and repressed desire

Its much deeper — the story reveals a heartbreaking flaw of human nature

This one flaw haunted Aristotle, and shaped 3,000 years of Western thought on the soul…🧵 As a recap, Oedipus’ story begins with a prophecy:

King Laius of Thebes is told his son will murder him and marry Laius’ wife (the child’s mother)

To escape fate, he abandons Oedipus to a shepherd, who delivers Oedipus to Corinth

How can a good God let you suffer and die?

Tolkien said a 600 year old poem had the answer to this question

He spent over 25 years reading, studying and teaching it to students

Here’s the poem, and what it taught him about God, grief, and finding hope in the face of death…🧵 “Pearl,” was a 14th century medieval poem

It follows a father’s grief — his 2 year old daughter, Pearl, just died

Her loss has devastated him and made his life seem meaningless

Even worse, his grief is no ordinary grief

Solomon was the wisest man to ever live

He wrote divine proverbs, built God’s temple, and ruled a golden empire

Yet one fatal flaw destroyed it all, and his empire crumbled

Here’s the sin that ensnared Solomon, and how it still destroys civilizations to this day…🧵 Solomon’s glory shined early

He found favor with God and was granted one wish from the Lord

His wish:

“Give your servant an understanding mind to govern your people,

That I may discern between good and evil”

Orwell was a staunch socialist

But everything changed when he saw real poverty

He saw untold horrors in a mining town, and wrote a report that sent socialists into a fury

Here’s what he saw, and the rot it revealed at the heart of socialism…🧵 Orwell writes his critiques in his work “The Road to Wigan Pier”

It’s comprised of 2 parts:

Part 1 shows the life of working class miners in England

Part 2 is Orwell’s critique against socialism

First here’s what Orwell saw on his visit to a mining town

Before Stalin and Nietzsche, Dostoevsky foresaw the bloodbath of nihilism

He knew it would murder millions, but he also knew how to defeat it

In a single sentence, he showed how to save mankind from its most catastrophic evil…🧵 Dostoevsky’s line is famous and well-quoted, but hardly understood:

“Beauty will save the world”

It’s genius isn’t fully grasped until you know the context

Dostoevsky wrote this sentence in his most underrated novel

400 years ago, Don Quixote prophesied the death of God

The book warned against the fatal mistake that gutted the soul of the West

Here’s that mistake, and the path to rediscovering beauty, goodness, and God in a cynical age… 🧵 At first glance it’s difficult to understand why Don Quixote is a great book

The novel is bloated by modern standards, and the plot is inconsequential

It simply follows protagonist Don Quixote’s descent into insanity

Yet there’s a hidden genius in his madness

Dante’s Inferno has 9 circles:

The deeper you go, the darker it gets

Yet one kind of soul is so depraved, even Hell itself rejects them

Here’s the sin too pitiful for even Satan to claim…🧵 First lets recap the structure of Dante’s Hell

The first circle is Limbo:

It’s a realm of peaceful sorrow, reserved for virtuous pagans

The next 8 circles are divided into 3 subsections

Tolkien’s best story wasn’t in Lord of the Rings

It was published posthumously:

A forgotten dialogue on how God would save Middle Earth from death

This story might change how you see the crucifixion forever…🧵 Tolkien’s story “Athrabeth Findrod ah Andreth,” appears in the book “Morgoth’s Ring”

It follows a conversation between Finrod, an immortal elf, and Andreth, a wise woman

They’re plagued by a haunting question:

“Why do men die?”

Dante’s Inferno is packed with horror:

Decapitations, eviscerations, and demons clawing the damned

But there’s a method in this madness of Hell:

Every punishment has a purpose

Here’s what Dante’s Hell reveals about God’s justice, and his love….🧵 The poem begins with protagonist Dante lost in a dark wilderness

He’s in exile because he “wandered from the straight and true”

This wilderness is both literal and spiritual:

Sin has mired his soul and threatens his salvation

One myth shaped the soul of Western Civilization

It inspired Rome, England, Charlemagne — even the American Founders

Dante modeled The Divine Comedy on it too

Here’s the myth behind the greatest minds and dynasties of the West…🧵 Virgil’s Aeneid is the myth behind the empires

Written in 19BC, it follows Aeneas — a survivor of the Trojan War from Homer’s Iliad

Aeneas has a special destiny from the gods:

If he follows their bidding, he’ll found a grand empire

The Reign of Terror was a bloody nightmare

Tens of thousands were slaughtered in the name of virtue and equality

And one man fueled it all

Here’s the tyrant, and his ideology that fueled the worst nightmare in French history…🧵 Maximilian Robespierre was born in May 6, 1758 in Arras, France

He had a miserable childhood:

His mother died when he was 6, and his father abandoned his family

How did Robespierre handle his grief?

CS Lewis, Tolkien, and Chesterton were all inspired by one writer

His works shaped Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, and countless other tales

Here’s the writer behind the writers —

And his books that inspired the greatest thinkers of the 20th century…🧵 George Macdonald was a 19th century author

He was a pioneer of the fantasy genre, and a personal mentor to Lewis Caroll

On the surface, he wrote simple children stories

But his worlds were also imbued with a hidden genius

Hamlet is the greatest play of all time

It also asks one of the most disturbing questions in all of literature

Not, “To be or not to be?”

But a simpler 2-word question:

It drove Hamlet insane, and still haunts readers to this day…🧵 The central question of Hamlet is the opening line:

“Who’s there?”

On the surface it's a simple question - a guard asks it as a stranger approaches

But there's far more to this question than meets the eye:

It hauntingly lingers throughout the entire play