Top 500 Marcus Aurelius Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “It is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but ever that of the present alone. Even this burden, too, can be lessened if you confine it strictly to its own limits.”

— Marcus Aurelius

302. “Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late; the good lived yesterday.”

— Marcus Aurelius

303. “It is a sin to persue pleasure as a good and to avoid pain as a evil.”

— Marcus Aurelius

304. “If it’s time for you to go, leave willingly – as you would to accomplish anything that can be done with grace and honor.”

— Marcus Aurelius

305. “No one can keep you from living as your nature requires. Nothings can happen to you that is not required by Nature.”

— Marcus Aurelius

306. “The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrong-doer.”

— Marcus Aurelius

307. “He who follows reason in all things is both tranquil and active at the same time, and also cheerful and collected.”

— Marcus Aurelius

308. “There is nothing happens to any person but what was in his power to go through with.”

— Marcus Aurelius

309. “Take away the complaint, ‘I have been harmed,’ and the harm is taken away.”

— Marcus Aurelius

310. “The offender needs pity, not wrath; those who must needs be corrected, should be treated with tact and gentleness; and one must be always ready to learn better. ‘The best kind of revenge is, not to become like unto them.’”

— Marcus Aurelius

311. “To expect an impossibility is madness.”

— Marcus Aurelius

312. “Because your own strength is unequal to a task, do not assume it is beyond the powers of man.”

— Marcus Aurelius

313. “When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man’s life.”

— Marcus Aurelius

314. “Think of the universal substance, of which thou has a very small portion; and of universal time, of which a short and indivisible interval has been assigned to thee; and of that which is fixed by destiny, and how small a part of it thou art.”

— Marcus Aurelius

315. “It is right that man should love those who have offended him. He will do so when he remembers that all men are his relations, and that it is through ignorance and involuntarily that they sin, – and then we all die so soon.”

— Marcus Aurelius

316. “Just as the sand-dunes, heaped one upon another, hide each the first, so in life the former deeds are quickly hidden by those that follow after.”

— Marcus Aurelius

317. “When you have done a good deed that another has had the benefit of, why do you need a third reward-as fools do-praise for having done well or looking for a favor in return.”

— Marcus Aurelius

318. “Let thine occupations be few, saith the sage, if thou wouldst lead a tranquil life.”

— Marcus Aurelius

319. “To live each day as though one’s last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing – here is the perfection of character.”

— Marcus Aurelius

320. “Vex not thy spirit at the course of things, they heed not thy vexations.”

— Marcus Aurelius

321. “We are the other of the other.”

— Marcus Aurelius

322. “At day’s first light have in readiness, against disinclination to leave your bed, the thought that “I am rising for the work of man.””

— Marcus Aurelius

323. “You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.”

— Marcus Aurelius

324. “Failure to read what is happening in another’s soul is not easily seen as a cause of unhappiness: but those who fail to attend the motions of their own soul are necessarily unhappy.”

— Marcus Aurelius

325. “Both happiness and unhappiness depend on perception.”

— Marcus Aurelius

326. “Consider thyself to be dead, and to have completed thy life up to the present time; and live according to nature the remainder which is allowed thee.”

— Marcus Aurelius

327. “Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.”

— Marcus Aurelius

328. “It were well to die if there be gods, and sad to live if there be none.”

— Marcus Aurelius

329. “Take full account of what Excellencies you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not.”

— Marcus Aurelius

330. “How many after being celebrated by fame have been given up to oblivion; and how many who have celebrated the fame of others have long been dead.”

— Marcus Aurelius

331. “The healthy eye ought to see all visible things and not to say, I wish for green things; for this is the condition of a diseased eye.”

— Marcus Aurelius

332. “Nothing proceeds from nothingness, as also nothing passes away into non-existence.”

— Marcus Aurelius

333. “God overrules all mutinous accidents, brings them under His laws of fate, and makes them all serviceable to His purpose.”

— Marcus Aurelius

334. “The one thing worth living for is to keep one’s soul pure.”

— Marcus Aurelius

335. “Thou sufferest justly: for thou choosest rather to become good to-morrow than to be good to-day.”

— Marcus Aurelius

336. “No form of nature is inferior to art; for the arts merely imitate natural forms. – Variant: There is no nature which is inferior to art, the arts imitate the nature of things.”

— Marcus Aurelius

337. “He who eats my bread, does my will.”

— Marcus Aurelius

338. “As the same fire assumes different shapes When it consumes objects differing in shape, So does the one Self take the shape Of every creature in whom he is present.”

— Marcus Aurelius

339. “Man must be arched and buttressed from within, else the temple wavers to the dust.”

— Marcus Aurelius

340. “A man does not sin by commission only, but often by omission.”

— Marcus Aurelius

341. “Stick to what’s in front of you – idea, action, utterance.”

— Marcus Aurelius

342. “From my grandfather’s father, I learned to dispense with attendance at public schools, and to enjoy good teachers at home, and to recognize that on such things money should be eagerly spent.”

— Marcus Aurelius

343. “Everything is mere opinion.”

— Marcus Aurelius

344. “He does not write at all whose poems no man reads.”

— Marcus Aurelius

345. “Reflect often upon the rapidity with which all existing things, or things coming into existence, sweep past us and are carried away.”

— Marcus Aurelius

346. “Keep constantly in mind in how many things you yourself have witnessed changes already. The universe is change, life is understanding.”

— Marcus Aurelius

347. “Always bear this in mind, that very little indeed is necessary for living a happy life.”

— Marcus Aurelius

348. “Socrates used to call the opinions of the many by the name of Lamiae, bugbears to frighten children.”

— Marcus Aurelius

349. “Men despise one another and flatter one another; and men wish to raise themselves above one another, and crouch before one another.”

— Marcus Aurelius

350. “How easy it is to repel and release every impression which is troublesome and immediately to be tranquil.”

— Marcus Aurelius