Top 500 Marcus Aurelius Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Things that have a common quality ever quickly seek their kind.”

— Marcus Aurelius

252. “To live happily is an inward power of the soul.”

— Marcus Aurelius

253. “Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.”

— Marcus Aurelius

254. “Everything is interwoven, and the web is holy.”

— Marcus Aurelius

255. “Does the light of the lamp shine without losing its splendour until it is extinguished; and shall the truth which is in thee and justice and temperance be extinguished before thy death?”

— Marcus Aurelius

256. “The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.”

— Marcus Aurelius

257. “We are born for cooperation, as are the feet, the hands, the eyelids, and the upper and lower jaws.”

— Marcus Aurelius

258. “Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and ay, ‘Why were things of this sort ever brought into the world?’”

— Marcus Aurelius

259. “Because a thing is difficult for you, do not therefore suppose it to be beyond mortal power. On the contrary, if anything is possible and proper for man to do, assume that it must fall within your own capacity.”

— Marcus Aurelius

260. “Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in thy power.”

— Marcus Aurelius

261. “A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.”

— Marcus Aurelius

262. “Dress not thy thoughts in too fine a raiment. And be not a man of superfluous words or superfluous deeds.”

— Marcus Aurelius

263. “Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.”

— Marcus Aurelius

264. “Your mind will take on the character of your most frequent thoughts: souls are dyed by thoughts.”

— Marcus Aurelius

265. “It is the duty of men to love even those who injure them.”

— Marcus Aurelius

266. “No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be emerald, my color undiminished.”

— Marcus Aurelius

267. “In the case of most pains let this remark of Epicurus aid thee, that the pain is neither intolerable nor everlasting, if thou bear in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination...”

— Marcus Aurelius

268. “This is the mark of a perfect character – to pass through each day as though it were the last, without agitation, without torpor, and without pretense.”

— Marcus Aurelius

269. “Turn thy thoughts now to the consideration of thy life, thy life as a child, as a youth, thy manhood, thy old age, for in these also every change was a death. Is this anything to fear?”

— Marcus Aurelius

270. “Live with the gods. And he does so who constantly shows them that his soul is satisfied with what is assigned to him.”

— Marcus Aurelius

271. “All men are made one for another: either then teach them better or bear with them.”

— Marcus Aurelius

272. “I am an old man and have had many worries, but most have never come to pass.”

— Marcus Aurelius

273. “Nothing that goes on in anyone else’s mind can harm you.”

— Marcus Aurelius

274. “You need to be prepared for firm decisions and action, without losing gentleness towards those who obstruct or abuse you. It’s as great a weakness to be angry with them as it is to abandon your plan of action and give up through fear.”

— Marcus Aurelius

275. “What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.”

— Marcus Aurelius

276. “A good disposition is invincible, if it be genuine.”

— Marcus Aurelius

277. “Everything is ephemeral, both that which remembers and that which is remembered.”

— Marcus Aurelius

278. “All that happens is as usual and familiar as the rose in spring and the crop in summer.”

— Marcus Aurelius

279. “Unhappy am I because this has happened to me.- Not so, but happy am I, though this has happened to me, because I continue free from pain, neither crushed by the present nor fearing the future.”

— Marcus Aurelius

280. “Once you have done a man a service, what more reward would you have? Is it not enough to have obeyed the laws of your own nature, without expecting to be paid for it?”

— Marcus Aurelius

281. “When forced, as it seems, by your environment to be utterly disquieted, return with all speed into your self, staying in discord no longer than you must. By constant recurrence to the harmony, you will gain more command over it.”

— Marcus Aurelius

282. “Never act without purpose and resolve, or without the means to finish the job.”

— Marcus Aurelius

283. “Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.”

— Marcus Aurelius

284. “All things of the body stream away like a river, all things of the mind are dreams and delusion; life is warfare, and a visit to a strange land; the only lasting fame is oblivion.”

— Marcus Aurelius

285. “Man is born for deeds of kindness.”

— Marcus Aurelius

286. “Life is a warfare and a stranger’s sojourn, and after fame is oblivion.”

— Marcus Aurelius

287. “A good man does not spy around for the black spots in others, but presses unswervingly on towards his mark.”

— Marcus Aurelius

288. “In the meantime, cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, not to trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune’s habit of behaving just as she pleases.”

— Marcus Aurelius

289. “Look within, for within is the wellspring of virtue, which will not cease flowing, if you cease not from digging.”

— Marcus Aurelius

290. “Neither worse then or better is a thing made by being praised.”

— Marcus Aurelius

291. “When men are inhuman, take care not to feel towards them as they do towards other humans.”

— Marcus Aurelius

292. “No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such.”

— Marcus Aurelius

293. “Death, like birth, is one of nature’s mysteries, the combining of primal elements and dissolving of the same into the same.”

— Marcus Aurelius

294. “Snow endures but for a season, and joy comes with the morning.”

— Marcus Aurelius

295. “Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people’s actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.”

— Marcus Aurelius

296. “Search men’s governing principles, and consider the wise, what they shun and what they cleave to.”

— Marcus Aurelius

297. “You are making an inopportune rejection of what Nature has given you today, if all your mind is set on what men will say of you tomorrow.”

— Marcus Aurelius

298. “Look deeply. Don’t miss the inherent quality and value of everything.”

— Marcus Aurelius

299. “The whole universe is change and life itself is but what you deem it – either gratefully better than or bitterly worse than something else that you alone choose.”

— Marcus Aurelius

300. “In an expression of true gratitude, sadness is conspicuous only by its absence.”

— Marcus Aurelius