Christopher D. Hall

“Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“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 - not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Don't go on discussing what a good person should be. Just be one.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Whoever does wrong, wrongs himself; whoever does injustice, does it to himself, making himself evil.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations