Plain
Marcus Aurelius — The Emperor

No one will admire you for clever speech — you just don't have that gift. Fine. But there are many other good qualities you can't blame on lack of natural ability. Show the ones that depend entirely on you: honesty, seriousness, hard work, ignoring pleasures. Don't complain. Be happy with little. Be kind. Be generous. Avoid excess and empty talk. Be great-hearted.

Meditations, Book 5, Section 5 Book 5 · 6 of 52
Knowing Yourself What Matters Most
Marcus Aurelius — The Emperor Original

No man can admire thee for thy sharp acute language, such is thy natural disability that way. Be it so: yet there be many other good things, for the want of which thou canst not plead the want or natural ability. Let them be seen in thee, which depend wholly from thee; sincerity, gravity, laboriousness, contempt of pleasures; be not querulous, be Content with little, be kind, be free; avoid all superfluity, all vain prattling; be magnanimous.

Meditations, Book 5, Section 5 Book 5 · 6 of 52
Marcus Aurelius — The Emperor

I will keep acting according to nature until I die. I will breathe my last breath into the same air that kept me alive all these years. I will fall back to the earth that gave my father his seed, my mother her blood, and my nurse her milk. This same earth has fed me and given me drink for so many years. It has carried me as I walked on it. It has put up with all the ways I have used it and abused it for my own purposes.

Meditations, Book 5, Section 4 Book 5 · 5 of 52
Death & Mortality Human Nature
Marcus Aurelius — The Emperor Original

I continue my course by actions according to nature, until I fall and cease, breathing out my last breath into that air, by which continually breathed in I did live; and falling upon that earth, out of whose gifts and fruits my father gathered his seed, my mother her blood, and my nurse her milk, out of which for so many years I have been provided, both of meat and drink. And lastly, which beareth me that tread upon it, and beareth with me that so many ways do abuse it, or so freely make use of it, so many ways to so many ends.

Meditations, Book 5, Section 4 Book 5 · 5 of 52
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Ancient philosophy, in plain English.

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