When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own – not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.

Marcus Aurelius

Apollo
By Giovanni Baglione (1620)

Apollo, Hermes and Heracles

"Be assured that the essence of piety towards the gods lies in this: to form right opinions about them, that they exist and govern the universe well and justly, and to fix yourself in this duty: to obey them and yield to them in everything which happens, and to willingly follow it as being accomplished by the wisest intelligence. ... But it also becomes incumbent on every one to offer libations and sacrifices and first-fruits, according to the customs of his country, purely, and not heedlessly nor negligently; not stingily nor extravagantly."

Epictetus, The Handbook 31

Those who are in the wrong in matters of supreme importance are objects of pity rather than of hate ...

Julian the Philosopher

Apollo Attended by Nymphs
by François Girardon

Pastoral Apollo
By John Flaxman

Symbols of the nine Muses, Greek mosaic from Elis C1st B.C., Archaeological Museum of Elis

Roman period Head of Apollo

Apollo and Daphne
By: Daniel Seiter

Only when we appreciate what purity and purification can mean in the Apollonian sense, will the true character of his spiritual stature become intelligible. We realize at once that to this spirituality belongs Apollonian music, knowledge of right and of the future, institution of higher ordinances. All these qualities characterize the Homeric Apollo. We sense that these properties and perfections radiate from a single basic quality and are manifold manifestations of a single divine being which the Greeks had worshipped as Apollo even before Homer.

The Homeric Gods. The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion

Bronze Apollo with Lyre

Hail Apollon Leschenorius,
Guardian of sacred halls and steadfast counsel,
Protector of words exchanged in trust,
I call upon Your wisdom and grace.

By Your light, may discourse be just,
By Your hand, may alliances be forged.
You who see beyond the spoken word,
Grant clarity and harmony in gathering.

I adore You, radiant Apollon,
Guide our hearts in unity,
Guard these halls with Your eternal watch.
Hail and be ever honored!

The god Apollo accepts the sacrifices of the shepherds
By: Gustave Moreau