Each day of Lent (minus Sundays) we'll bring you words of wisdom from spiritual guides.

20. Fyodor M. Dostoevsky: Choose to love
Christ said, "Go and give all you have to the poor and become the servant of all," for if you do that, you'll become a thousand times richer because your happiness won't be made just of good food, rich clothes, satisfied vanity, and appeased envy. Instead it will be built on love, love multiplied by love without end. And then you will gain not just riches, but the whole world!

Today we amass material things without ever satisfying our greed, and then we madly squander all we have amassed. But a day will come when there will be no orphans, no beggars; everyone will be as one of my own family, everyone will be my brother or sister, and that is when I will have gained everything and everyone!

Will we choose to love, or not? (The Adolescent, W.W. Norton)

Dostoevsky (1821 -1881) was the Russian author of The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment.

Find spiritual advice for Lent from other guides in 40 days to a new you.