Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book X, §16 (180 CE) Translated by Gregory Hays
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When and why it was written
- When
- Around 170 CE, in the private notebooks.
- Why
- Marcus was a serious student of philosophy in a court full of people who discussed virtue professionally.
What it means
A note to himself about a specific failure mode: treating the definition of the good as the work, when the definition is the easy part.
It is brief because the point resists elaboration. Any expansion would be another round of the arguing it forbids.
Our reading of the passage cited above, not a quotation from a commentary.
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Meditations, 180 CE
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