Work

Meditations

Ta eis heauton · To Himself

About this text

A private journal written during military campaigns. Never meant for publication. Twelve books of reflections on duty, mortality, impermanence, and how to be decent while holding absolute power.

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own.

And so none of them can injure me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him.

Never regard something as doing you good if it makes you betray a trust, or lose your sense of shame, or makes you show hatred, suspicion, ill will, or hypocrisy.

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