How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter)
Quote #7
When someone does you some wrong, you should consider immediately what judgement of good or evil led him to wrong you. When you see this, you will pity him, and not feel surprise or anger. (7.26)
Marcus says a lot in his Meditations about wrongdoing and the proper response to it. This is, perhaps, the most surprising response. Marcus is all about a kind of empathy with the person who has wronged you. He believes that you have to understand the source of the other person's ignorance and try to remedy it if things are really going to change. So it's all about rehabilitation rather than retaliation and revenge for this emperor.
Quote #8
Whenever you suffer pain, have ready to hand the thought that pain is not a moral evil and does not harm your governing intelligence: pain can do no damage either to its rational or to its social nature. (7.64)
Marcus believes that pain has the ability to enslave a man of reason, since the distress of the body can overpower the mind. More distress is added if man thinks that pain is being inflicted on him for some other reason—as a punishment or as part of a wrong inflicted by someone else. But Marcus's view is that pain has no inherent power to damage. It lies with the person who is experiencing it to cordon it off and keep it from the mind, which can make value judgments about it. If he can keep pain in the body, where it properly belongs, then the mind will be free and pure.
Quote #9
What are these principles? Those of good and evil—the belief that nothing is good for a human being which does not make him just, self-controlled, brave and free: and nothing evil which does not make him the opposite of these. (8.1)
Marcus has a pretty simple definition of his principles and paints his concept of good and evil with a very broad brush. Evil, in essence, doesn't exist by itself. Rather, it is the opposite of that which is good: truth, justice, restraint—all the things that make men free and strong of mind.