Marcus Aurelius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
You should also keep an eye on things like this: that even what comes as a by-product of what nature produces has a certain charm and appeal of its own. For instance, when bread is baked, some parts of it crack open; and these very cracks, which occur in a way contrary to the baker's intention, somehow look right and in their own way stir up an appetite for the food. Again, figs, when they are at their ripest, split open; and in overripe olives, the very nearness to decay adds a beauty of its own to the fruit. And ears of grain bending down, and the lion's furrowed brow, and the foam flowing from the mouths of boars, and many other things - looked at on their own, they are far from beautiful, yet because they follow upon what nature produces, they add to its adornment and delight the mind. So that if a person has feeling and a deeper understanding of what happens in the whole, hardly anything that comes about as a consequence of it will fail to seem to him somehow pleasingly put together. Such a person will find real animals baring their fangs just as delightful to watch as the copies that painters and sculptors make of them, and will be able to see in an old woman and an old man a certain ripeness and prime, and the erotic charm in children, with his own sober eyes. Many such things will not be convincing to everyone, but will strike only the one who is genuinely at home with nature and her works.