Saturday, September 26, 2009

Wisdom from Marcus Aurelius

Wisdom for us all - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 2

Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness - all of them due to the offenders' ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow-creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading. Neither can I be angry with my brother or fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like a man's two hands, feet, or eyelids, or like the upper and lower rows of his teeth. To obstruct each other is against Nature's law - and what is irritation or aversion but a form of obstruction?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I see your Marcus Aurelius and send you another one
Do not indulge in dreams of having
what you have not, but reckon up the
chief of the blessings you do possess
and then thankfully remember how
you would crave them if they were
not yours.

Marcus Aurelius