Top 500 Marcus Aurelius Quotes (2024 Update)
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451. “People generally despise where they flatter, and cringe to those they would gladly overtop; so that truth and ceremony are two things.”

— Marcus Aurelius

452. “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

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

— Marcus Aurelius

454. “Love only what befalls you and is spun for you by fate.”

— Marcus Aurelius

455. “All things are changing; and thou thyself art in continuous mutation and in a manner in continuous destruction and the whole universe to.”

— Marcus Aurelius

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

— Marcus Aurelius

457. “How very near us stand the two vast gulfs of time, the past and the future, in which all things disappear.”

— Marcus Aurelius

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

— Marcus Aurelius

459. “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

460. “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

461. “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

462. “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

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

— Marcus Aurelius

464. “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

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

— Marcus Aurelius

466. “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

467. “The lot assigned to every man is suited to him, and suits him to itself.”

— Marcus Aurelius

468. “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

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

— Marcus Aurelius

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

— Marcus Aurelius

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

— Marcus Aurelius

472. “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

473. “In the same degree in which a man’s mind is nearer to freedom from all passion, in the same degree also is it nearer to strength.”

— Marcus Aurelius

474. “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

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

— Marcus Aurelius

476. “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

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

— Marcus Aurelius

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

— Marcus Aurelius

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

— Marcus Aurelius

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

— Marcus Aurelius

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

— Marcus Aurelius

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

— Marcus Aurelius

483. “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

484. “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

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

— Marcus Aurelius

486. “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

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

— Marcus Aurelius

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

— Marcus Aurelius

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

— Marcus Aurelius

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

— Marcus Aurelius

491. “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

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

— Marcus Aurelius

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

— Marcus Aurelius

494. “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

495. “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

496. “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

497. “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

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

— Marcus Aurelius

499. “That which is really beautiful has no need of anything; not more than law, not more than truth, not more than benevolence or modesty.”

— Marcus Aurelius

500. “Suppose that men kill thee, cut thee in pieces, curse thee, what can these things do to prevent thy mind from remaining pure, wise, sober, just?”

— Marcus Aurelius