HomeQuotesMarcus Aurelius
Stoic philosophy
No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good.
Meditations, Book VII, Section 15 (Gregory Hays trans.)
Translated by Gregory Hays · Stoic philosophy
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What this means, and why it matters to a father

Marcus Aurelius used his journal to return, again and again, to the same anchor: his task is to be good. Not to be recognized as good, not to be rewarded for being good, not to be good when it is easy or when people around him are doing the same.

There is more to this one. The full context — the events behind the words, what the author was living through, and how it applies to the specific situations of fatherhood — is in the app under Deeper Understanding.

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Related themes

integritycharacteridentitywisdom

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