Top 500 Marcus Aurelius Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “A rational nature admits of nothing but what is serviceable to the rest of mankind.”

— Marcus Aurelius

452. “The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.”

— Marcus Aurelius

453. “I, who have never willfully pained another, have no business to pain myself.”

— Marcus Aurelius

454. “It is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own badness, which is indeed possible, but to fly from other men’s badness, which is impossible.”

— Marcus Aurelius

455. “Remember that the sole life which a man can lose is that which he is living at the moment.”

— Marcus Aurelius

456. “Remember that all is opinion. For what was said by the Cynic Monimus is manifest: and manifest too is the use of what was said, if a man receives what may be got out of it as far as it is true.”

— Marcus Aurelius

457. “People generally despise where they flatter, and cringe to those they would gladly overtop; so that truth and ceremony are two things.”

— Marcus Aurelius

458. “Thanks to the gods I didn’t spend much time while growing up with my grandfather’s mistress and preserved the flower of my youth, waiting for the proper time to demonstrate my virility.”

— Marcus Aurelius

459. “Gluttony and drunkenness have two evils attendant on them; they make the carcass smart, as well as the pocket.”

— Marcus Aurelius

460. “He that lives alone lives in danger; society avoids many dangers.”

— Marcus Aurelius

461. “The sinner sins against himself; the wrongdoer wrongs himself, becoming the worse by his own action.”

— Marcus Aurelius

462. “That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.”

— Marcus Aurelius

463. “Be not unwilling in what thou doest, neither selfish nor unadvised nor obstinate; let not over-refinement deck out thy thought; be not wordy nor a busybody.”

— Marcus Aurelius

464. “In man’s life, time is but a moment; being, a flux; sense is dim; the material frame corruptible; soul, an eddy of breath; fortune a thing inscrutable, and fame precarious.”

— Marcus Aurelius

465. “The controlling Intelligence understands its own nature, and what it does, and whereon it works.”

— Marcus Aurelius

466. “The man who has a house everywhere has a home nowhere.”

— Marcus Aurelius

467. “Consider how many do not even know your name, and how many will soon forget it, and how those who now praise you will presently blame you.”

— Marcus Aurelius

468. “Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.”

— Marcus Aurelius

469. “Do you see what little is required of a man to live a well-tempered and god-fearing life? Obey these precepts, and the gods will ask nothing more.”

— Marcus Aurelius

470. “A lucky chance is constant in nothing but inconstancy.”

— Marcus Aurelius

471. “Look at everything that exists, and observe that it is already in dissolution and in change, and as it were putrefaction or dispersion, or that everything is so constituted by nature as to die.”

— Marcus Aurelius

472. “Be satisfied with your business, and learn to love what you were bred to.”

— Marcus Aurelius

473. “From the philosopher Catulus, never to be dismissive of a friend’s accusation, even if it seems unreasonable, but to make every effort to restore the relationship to its normal condition.”

— Marcus Aurelius

474. “Put it out of the power of truth to give you an ill character. If anybody reports you not to be an honest man let your practice give him the lie.”

— Marcus Aurelius

475. “Look deep into the hearts of men, and see what delights and disgusts the wise.”

— Marcus Aurelius

476. “Not to waste time on nonsense. Not to be taken in by conjurors and hoodoo artists with their talk about incantations and exorcism and all the rest of it. Not to be obsessed with quail-fighting or other crazes like that.”

— Marcus Aurelius

477. “To no man make yourself a boon companion: Your joy will be less but less will be your grief.”

— Marcus Aurelius

478. “Why should a man have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements? For it is according to nature, and nothing is evil which is according to nature.”

— Marcus Aurelius

479. “It is not fit that I should give myself pain, for I have never intentionally given pain even to another.”

— Marcus Aurelius

480. “Concentrate every minute like a Roman – like a man – on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice.”

— Marcus Aurelius

481. “Be mindful at all times of the following: the nature of the whole universe, the nature of the part that is me, the relation of the one to the other, the one so vast, the other so small.”

— Marcus Aurelius

482. “If I and my two children cannot move the gods, the gods must have their reasons.”

— Marcus Aurelius

483. “Can we wonder that men perish and are forgotten, when their noblest and most enduring works decay? Death comes even to monumental structures, and oblivion rests on the most illustrious names.”

— Marcus Aurelius

484. “Let your one delight and refreshment be to pass from one service to the community to another, with God ever in mind.”

— Marcus Aurelius

485. “All that is from the gods is full of Providence.”

— Marcus Aurelius

486. “Infinity is a fathomless gulf, into which all things vanish.”

— Marcus Aurelius

487. “If souls continue to exist, how does the air contain them from eternity?”

— Marcus Aurelius

488. “No one loses any other life than the one he now lives, nor does one live any other life than that which he will lose.”

— Marcus Aurelius

489. “I bless the gods for not letting my education in rhetoric, poetry, and other literary studies come easily to me, and thereby sparing me from an absorbing interest in these subjects.”

— Marcus Aurelius

490. “Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.”

— Marcus Aurelius

491. “Light may earth’s crumbling sand be laid on thee, that dogs may dig thy bones up easily.”

— Marcus Aurelius

492. “The rottenness of the matter which is the foundation of everything!”

— Marcus Aurelius

493. “Life is a campaign, a brief staying in a strange region.”

— Marcus Aurelius

494. “Men exist for the sake of one another.”

— Marcus Aurelius

495. “Let thy chief fort and place of defense be a mind free from passions. A stronger place and better fortified than this, hath no man.”

— Marcus Aurelius

496. “A little time, and thou shalt close thy eyes; and him who has attended thee to thy grave, another soon will lament.”

— Marcus Aurelius

497. “If any man has done wrong, the harm is his own. But perhaps he has not done wrong.”

— Marcus Aurelius

498. “Hast thou reason? I have. Why then dost not thou use it? For if this does its own work, what else dost thou wish?”

— Marcus Aurelius

499. “A man makes no noise over a good deed, but passes on to another as a vine to bear grapes again in season.”

— Marcus Aurelius

500. “We must press on then, in haste; not simply because every hour brings us nearer to death, but because even before then our powers of perception and comprehension begin to deteriorate.”

— Marcus Aurelius