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# Sermon 4
- URL: https://david-santin-kilday-dsk.ghost.io/sermon-4/
- Published: 2026-08-16T08:50:38.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-16T08:50:38.000Z
- Author: David S Kilday

A Sermon on Stoicism and some Quotes from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations Copyright 2026 David Santin Kilday (DSK) The confluence of Stoic Philosophy and Romantic Philosophy might be interesting to elaborate. Do you know the painter Caspar David Friedrich? You should know his painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818). This painting is seen as representative of the Romantic period. In it, a man stands unmoved on a rocky headland upon which the anarchic waves rage and break. It was Marcus Aurelius, a Roman Stoic in the tradition of the ancient Greeks, who wrote: “Be like the rocky headland on which the waves break incessantly; it stands fast and around it the seething of the water sinks to rest (Gemini AI).” Who was Marcus Aurelius? Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor during the height of the Roman Empires’ imperial extension. Marcus Aurelius writes on the subject of opposition. “The impediment to action advances the action. What stands in the way becomes the way (Gemini AI).” The law is the only universal moral code and all other ethical systems (even religious ethics) are subordinate to the ethics codified in law. We learn not to respond to the hatred of our enemies with hatred but with informed opposition. Hatred is an emotion. Why muck up informed opposition with an unreasoning emotion like hatred? Hatred is the emotion of the carnivore in the jungle not the gravitas of civil discourse appropriate to a civilized society. Pertaining to hatred: “The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury (Gemini AI).” Wasn't this the logic of the nonviolent civil rights movement, Ghandi, Christ, and all others who embraced nonviolent opposition to become martyrs in this atrocity exhibit, this warworld, we call Earth. Don't hate haters when the object of your loathing is beneath contempt. Simply oppose the atrocious and depraved through the application of Law.