It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own. If a god appeared to us—or a wise human being, even—and prohibited us from concealing our thoughts or imagining anything without immediately shouting it out, we wouldn’t make it through a single day. That’s how much we value other people’s opinions—instead of our own.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.4
Tag: Stoicism
You are a little soul, carrying a corpse.
You are a little soul, carrying a corpse.
-Epictetus, Fragments, Fragment xxvi.
Marcus Aurelius’ Advice for Twitter Users
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.
–Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book II, trans. by Gregory Hays