Quote checked against the text
“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.” — attributed to Marcus Aurelius
In substance, yes; in this wording, no. The idea is at Meditations, VI, 6; George Long’s 1862 edition is quoted below, and the sentence as it circulates is not this translator’s.
In substance, yes. Book VI, chapter 6 is a single sentence, which Long gives in 1862 as “The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like [the wrong-doer]”, the brackets marking words he supplied. “Best revenge” and “performed the injury” are not in his text; they come from an older English rendering, and the sentence circulates in several forms, down to “The best revenge is not to be like that.”
The difference is small but real. Long has a way of avenging, not a revenge; and the object is not to become like the one who did wrong, not to be unlike him. The chapter has no context: it stands between a line on what each thing is in itself and a line on taking pleasure in social acts.
The chapter is in the app with its reference: Meditations, VI, 6.
What we searched
Each fragment is searched, normalized, in every file of the editions below. The block is the search and its result, replayed at each build.
The wording was searched in Long 1862 (12 books, 487 chapters) and, in French, Couat 1904 and Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire 1876 (12 books each).
$ node tools/seo/grep-quote.mjs --lang en --author aurele "best revenge" "performed the injury" "avenging thyself"
George Long, 1862 — Meditations · 12 books, 487 chapters (1 file)
"best revenge" 0 hits
"performed the injury" 0 hits
"avenging thyself" 2 hits
l. 1838 [essay — outside the author’s text] must not be practised. "The best way of avenging thyself," says the
l. 3902 6. The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like [the
$ node tools/seo/grep-quote.mjs --lang fr --author aurele "meilleure vengeance" "commis l’injustice" "ne pas leur ressembler"
Auguste Couat, 1904 — Pensées · 12 books, 487 chapters (IV, 19–20 and VII, 47–48 merged by the translator) (12 files)
"meilleure vengeance" 0 hits
"commis l’injustice" 0 hits
"ne pas leur ressembler" 1 hit
livre-06.txt l. 25 La meilleure manière de le défendre est de ne pas leur ressembler.
Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire, 1876 — Pensées · 12 books, 487 chapters — second French edition, shown beside Couat (12 files)
"meilleure vengeance" 0 hits
"commis l’injustice" 0 hits
"ne pas leur ressembler" 1 hit
livre-06.txt l. 30 Le meilleur moyen de se défendre contre eux, c’est de ne pas leur ressembler.This sentence appears once in the list of circulating quotes we collected on 2026-08-09.
What the text says
The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like [the wrong-doer].
In the app
The passage of this chapter as Stoïque gives it, with its reference.
The finest way of avenging yourself is not to become like the one who wronged you.
— MARCUS AURELIUS · MEDITATIONS, VI, 6
After G. Long (1862), modernized
How to cite
The idea, not this wording, is at:
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 6 (trans. George Long, 1862)
Other sentences checked
All sentences attributed to Marcus AureliusAll quote checks
Every passage in Stoïque carries its reference. The 166 passages of Marcus Aurelius are free in the app, each with its book and chapter.