romeotuma wrote: 

Yet for all that, he was Emperor, he decided, he fought, he mattered, he thought, he lived his Stoic ideals as well as anyone could, he wrote, he lived, did comparatively little harm to the people that mattered to him, defended what he thought of as civilization, and all more fully than most of us ever could. Which is why you quote him, imperfect as he was and as we all are. Pretty close to the ideal philosopher king, and a pretty good choice for a pretty good guy.

If only he could have made a wiser choice concerning his succession.

"Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also."

Marcus Aurelius is dead...

"In the life of a man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his sense a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, his fame doubtful. In short, all that is body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapors."  —Marcus Aurelius

Kierkegaard is dead...

"What is the Absurd? It is, as may quite easily be seen, that I, a rational being, must act in a case where my reason, my powers of reflection, tell me: you can just as well do the one thing as the other, that is to say where my reason and reflection say: you cannot act and yet here is where I have to act... The Absurd, or to act by virtue of the absurd, is to act upon faith ... I must act, but reflection has closed the road so I take one of the possibilities and say: This is what I do, I cannot do otherwise because I am brought to a standstill by my powers of reflection."

—Søren Kierkegaard, Journals, 1849