To study the effect of loading rate on the characteristic stresses of brittle rocks, uniaxial compression tests were carried out using MTS815 test machine and acoustic emission (AE) test system. The volume strain method, AE method, and bonded particle model (BPM) method based on the development of micro-cracks were adopted to determine the characteristic stresses of samples and investigate the loading rate effect of characteristic stresses for marble. Results show that values of the normalized characteristic stress determined by the three methods are relatively close, and the BPM method based on the numbers of micro-crack is a reliable and effective method. Moreover, the normalized characteristic stresses decrease as loading rates increase in the range of medium and low. Numerical simulation results show that when the loading rates increased in a wide range, the normalized crack initial stress and crack damage stress both decrease. When the loading rates are in medium and low range, the normalized characteristic stresses decrease significantly. However, it tend to be stable when the loading rates are high, especially for the normalized crack damage stress. In comparison, the loading rate effect of normalized crack damage stress is more obvious than that of the normalized crack initial stress.