Marcus Aurelius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Whenever you are offended by someone's shamelessness, ask yourself at once: can there fail to be shameless people in the world? There cannot. So do not demand the impossible. This man is simply one of those shameless people who must exist in the world. Keep the same thought ready at hand for the rogue, the faithless man, and anyone who does wrong in any way at all — for the moment you remind yourself that this whole class of people cannot fail to exist, you will be gentler toward each of them individually. It is also useful to bring to mind at once what virtue nature has given man to counter this particular fault: for she has given, as an antidote, gentleness against the unreasonable man, and against another some other power — and in general it is possible for you to re-teach the one who has gone astray, for everyone who does wrong misses his true mark and has gone astray. And how have you really been harmed? You will find that none of these people, at whom you are provoked, has done anything that could actually make your mind worse — and it is there, and only there, that your harm and your evil have their whole existence. And what is strange or new about it, if the uneducated man does the things an uneducated man does? Look instead to whether it is not rather yourself you ought to blame, for not expecting that this man would commit this fault —
since you had the resources from reason to consider it likely that he would commit it, and yet you forgot, and now you are astonished that he has done wrong. But above all, when you blame someone as faithless or ungrateful, turn back upon yourself: for the fault is plainly your own, whether you trusted that a person of such a character would keep faith, or whether in granting the favor you did not give it unconditionally, nor in such a way as to have already reaped the whole fruit of it from the very act itself. What more do you want, after doing a man good? Is it not enough that you have done something in accordance with your own nature, but must you go seeking payment for it? As if the eye asked to be paid for its sight, or the feet claimed wages for their stride. For just as these limbs were fashioned toward a particular end, and in carrying out their own function according to their own makeup they gain what is rightfully theirs, so too man, being fashioned by nature to do good to others, whenever he does something beneficial or in some other way contributes to the common good, has done that for which he was constituted, and has what is properly his own.