Pay earnest need to that which others say
And seek to enter thou the speaker's mind;
If wrong in thought or deed thyself shalt find
Then gladly change the error of thy way.
Seek only Truth, which shall not bring defeat;
Hurt lies with ignorance and self-deceit.
I've always liked the passage from Marcus Aurelius which is rendered into verse above and after my two earlier posts from the Meditations, I was going to post it anyway. However the events of the past few days make it particularly apposite.
The version above is from a small book of such renderings by John Lyth, published in 1942 as a PEN book, by George Allen and Unwin. It has a preface by Professor Gilbert Murray, from which I presume, Dr Lyth was not a nonentity, but I can find nothing about him, other than a version of the same book for sale on Canadian eBay. Any information would be gratefully received.
The prose version is from Book Eight verse 16 and in my version reads as follows (the link above is to an older translation):
To change your mind and defer to correction is not to sacrifice your independence; for such an act is your own, in pursuance of your own impulse, your own judgement, and your own thinking.
(trans. Maxwell Staniforth)
