quote · Source-linked selection
Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet this day with the busybody, the ungrateful, the arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, can neither be injured by any of them—for no one can fix on me what is ugly—nor can I be angry with my neighbor, nor hate him. We are made for coöperation; to act against one another, that is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and turn away.
Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet this day with the busybody, the ungrateful, the arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, can neither be injured by any of them—for no one can fix on me what is ugly—nor can I be angry with my neighbor, nor hate him. We are made for coöperation; to act against one another, that is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and turn away.
Approximate author period: c. 150 AD · classical
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Begin with source-checked readings and explanations ↗Attribution & collection notes
- Author or tradition
- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin. - Historical period
- Approximate author period: c. 150 AD · classical
author lifetime midpoint (121–180)
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- The Optimist’s Good Morning (1911) (1911 AD)
Complete signed selection 244; printed byline: Marcus Aurelius; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1911; printed copyright 1907
A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.
The voice behind the words.
Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.
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