Stephen Barkley

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I’m still working through Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf.  My reading slowed when I got to Marcus Aurelius. The translator called Aurelius “one of the loftiest, of the pagan moralists” (George Long). I find that since our worldviews are so fundamentally different, reading Stoic philosophy is aggravating.

That said, I came across a line by in Meditations VII.73 that’s quite wise and resonates strongly with Christian ethics:

When thou hast done a good act and another has received it, why dost thou still look for a third thing besides these, as fools do, either to have the reputation of having done a good act or to obtain a return?

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