"What is wickedness? It is that which many times and often thou hast already seen and known in the world. And so oft as anything doth happen that might otherwise trouble thee, let this momento presently come to thy mind, that it is that which thou hast already often seen and known." -Marcus Aurelius
Nothing new under the sun, for all things of old, of novelty, elapse again and again, over and over, according to Solomon, some thousand years before Marcus Aurelius. Death and life renews again and again, and only perhaps, in Buddhism do we see a common thread each time with a novel twist in terms of reincarnations, but the distinction there is granular, because the particulars, though different, are yet the same.
The duality between same and distinct, or new and old, leads us of course, to the great duality that is the Tao, the indefinite distinctive quality of truth.
"Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial." -Marcus Aurelius
You can, to some degree, choose your focus, direct the quill or till of the spirit towards the shores that we find most beneficent. We have the choice when we are in conscious control.
"Of all the faculties, you will find not one which is capable of contemplating itself, and consequently, not capable of either approving or disapproving." -Epictetus
"But when you must write something to a friend, grammar will tell you what words you should write; but whether you should write or not, grammar will not tell you."
"What faculty then will tell you?
That which contemplates both itself and all other things.
And what is this faculty? The rational faculty; for this is the only faculty that we have received which examines itself, what it is, and what power it has, and what is the value of this gift, and examines all other faculties: for what else is there which tells us that golden things are beautiful, for they do not say so themselves?" -Epictetus
"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, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them...." -Marcus Aurelius
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