Marcus Aurelius
Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears. ~ Marcus Aurelius
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–180) acquired the reputation of a philosopher-king within his lifetime. Aurelius remains as one of the most important Stoic philosophers.
Loss is nothing else than change. But the universal Nature delights in change. ~ Marcus Aurelius
Aurelius’ tome Meditations, written in Greek in the last decade of his life, remains revered as a literary monument to the ideals of service and duty. It aims to inspire equanimity while buttressed in conflict by finding strength in one’s own nature.
Be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds; it stands fast while the churning sea is lulled to sleep at its feet. ~ Marcus Aurelius
The central theme of Meditations was to develop a holistic perspective.
You have the power to strip away many superfluous troubles located wholly in your judgment, and to possess a large room for yourself embracing in thought the whole cosmos, to consider everlasting time, to think of the rapid change in the parts of each thing, of how short it is from birth until dissolution, and how the void before birth and that after dissolution are equally infinite. ~ Marcus Aurelius
Aurelius was an adept administrator, legislator, and jurist who clearly formulated the universality of natural law, reinforcing the basic Stoic doctrine of a holistic world.
If our intellectual part is common, the reason also, in respect of which we are rational beings, is common: if this is so, common also is the reason which commands us what to do, and what not to do; if this is so, there is a common law also; if this is so, we are fellow-citizens; if this is so, we are members of some political community; if this is so, the world is in a manner a state. ~ Marcus Aurelius
