The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–180 CE), Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, wrote his private notes—later titled the *Meditations*—during military campaigns on the empire’s northern frontiers. The work is not a public treatise but a personal notebook of ethical reminders: how to meet provocation, injustice, and the pressures of power without surrendering one’s character. In that Stoic setting, “revenge” is reframed away from retaliation and toward moral self-governance. The line reflects Aurelius’s recurring concern that wrongdoing by others is an external event; the only true harm is allowing it to corrupt one’s own reasoned, virtuous disposition.

The saying argues that the most effective response to injury is not to mirror the offender’s vice. For Stoics, virtue is the only real good, so retaliation that makes you cruel, dishonest, or vindictive is a second defeat—self-inflicted. “Revenge” becomes a paradox: you “win” by refusing to become the kind of person who harms others. The quote also implies a practical psychology: imitation is contagious, and resentment invites us to adopt the aggressor’s methods. By remaining just, temperate, and rational, one both preserves inner freedom and quietly exposes the offender’s moral failure without escalating conflict.

1) “The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrongdoer.”
2) “The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”