Aphorisms, quotes and thoughts by Boethius, ideas and great words of wisdom from his immortal text De consolatione philosophiae, The Consolation of Philosophy.
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 475–524 CE) is considered one of the most important intermediaries between ancient philosophy and the Latin Middle Ages. Often called “the last of the Romans and the first of the Scholastics,” he played a crucial role in preserving Greek culture in a West that was losing knowledge of that language.
His literary contribution is dominated by his masterpiece, De consolatione philosophiae (The Consolation of Philosophy), written in prison while awaiting execution. In this work, he employed the prosimetrum genre (alternating prose and verse), making philosophical concepts dramatic and accessible. At the same time, he introduced the allegorical figure of the Philosophical Woman, a model that profoundly influenced medieval and Renaissance literature, inspiring authors such as Dante (in the Convivio), Chaucer, and Shakespeare.
After the Bible, his Consolation was the most widely read and translated work of the Middle Ages (by rulers such as Alfred the Great and Elizabeth I). However, Boethius was not merely a popularizer, but an independent thinker who sought to reconcile the Christian faith with Hellenic reason. For this reason, he set himself the ambitious task of translating the entire works of Plato and Aristotle into Latin to demonstrate their essential harmony. Although unfinished, his translations of Aristotle’s Organon remained the sole source of Greek logic for Europe until the twelfth century.
Furthermore, a commentary on Porphyry’s translation (Isagoge) sparked the famous medieval dispute over universals (nominalism vs. realism). In his Opuscula sacra, he applied rigorous logical tools to Christian dogmas such as the Trinity and the Incarnation, laying the foundations for Scholasticism. Finally, he systematized the disciplines of knowledge, coining the term Quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy) and writing texts that remained standard in universities for over a millennium. Suffice it to say that his treatise on music (De institutione musica) was a standard text at Oxford and Cambridge until the mid-19th century.
You are the greatest comfort for exhausted spirits. By the weight of your tenets and the delightfulness of your singing you have so refreshed me that I now think myself capable of facing the blows of Fortune. You were talking of cures that were rather sharp. The thought of them no longer makes me shudder; in fact I’m so eager to hear more, I fervently beg you for them.’
Boethius
‘I knew it,’ She replied. ‘Once you began to hang onto my words in silent attention, I was expecting you to adopt this attitude, or rather, to be more exact, I myself created it in you. The remedies still to come are, in fact, of such a kind that they taste bitter to the tongue, but grow sweet once they are absorbed. But you say you are eager to hear more. You would be more than eager to hear if you knew the destination I am trying to bring you to.’
Boethius
I asked what it was and she told me that it was true happiness. ‘Your mind dreams of it,’ she said, ‘but your sight is clouded by shadows of happiness and cannot see reality.’ I begged her to lead on and show me the nature of true happiness without delay. ‘For you,’ she said, ‘I will do so gladly.
Boethius
Nature is content with few things, and with a very little of these.
Boethius
In omni aduersitate fortunae infelicissimum est genus infortunii fuisse felicem. (In every adversity of fortune, the most terrible of misfortunes is to have been happy.)
Boezio
Music is so naturally connected to us that, even if we want to, we cannot do without it.
Boethius
No man is rich who shakes and groans convinced that he needs more.
Boethius
The fact of the matter is that ill fortune is better for men than good. When Fortune smiles, she is always false. But when she is inconstant and whimsical, she shows her true self. The first aspect of Fortune will deceive people, but the second is instructive. The first blinds while the second opens men’s eyes to how fragile the happiness of mortals really is. The man who enjoys good fortune is driven frantic, running this way and that and trying to maintain what he has. The other is steady and, if he learns from his experience, even wise. Good fortune can lead men astray, deceiving them about what to expect from life and how to think of themselves. When Fortune is unkind, she draws men back to an understanding of what the world is, and who their friends are. Surely, in your time of trouble, you must have learned who were your real friends.
Boethius
Homo est minor mundus. (Man is a miniature world.)
And no renown can render you well-known: for if you think that fame can lengthen life by mortal famousness immortalized, the day will come that takes your fame as well, and there a second death for you awaits.
Boethius
I believe that adversity benefits men more than prosperity; for the latter always deceives with the appearance of happiness, when it seems favorable, while the former is always truthful, when by its constant change it proves unstable. The former deceives, the former instructs.
Boethius
Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.
Boethius
Nullum malum impunitum, nullum bonum irremuneratum. (Let no evil be without punishment, no good without reward).
Boethius
Man is a bipedal, reasoning animal.
Boethius
Bliss is a state resulting from the sum of all goods.
Boethius
He who, groaning in fear, believes himself to be in need, never feels rich.
Boethius
If God exists, where does evil come from? And if He doesn’t, where does good come from?
Boethius
It’s in your hands to shape your own destiny; every seemingly adverse fortune, if it doesn’t serve to test or correct, serves to punish.
Boethius
Nothing is more fleeting than the outward form, which withers and changes like wildflowers at the onset of autumn.
Boethius
Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law.
Boethius
Nunc fluens facit tempus, nunc stans facit aeternitatum. (The now that passes produces time, the now that remains produces eternity.)
Boethius
Indeed, the condition of human nature is just this; man towers above the rest of creation so long as he realizes his own nature, and when he forgets it, he sinks lower than the beasts. For other living things to be ignorant of themselves, is natural; but for man it is a defect.
Boethius
Balance out the good things and the bad that have happened in your life and you will have to acknowledge that you are still way ahead. You are unhappy because you have lost those things in which you took pleasure? But you can also take comfort in the likelihood that what is now making you miserable will also pass away.
Boethius
All fortune is good fortune; for it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is either useful or just.
Boethius
And it is because you don’t know the end and purpose of things that you think the wicked and the criminal have power and happiness.
Boethius
Contemplate the extent and stability of the heavens, and then at last cease to admire worthless things.
Boethius
If I have fully diagnosed the cause and nature of your condition, you are wasting away in pining and longing for your former good fortune. It is the loss of this which, as your imagination works upon you, has so corrupted your mind. I know the many disguises of that monster, Fortune, and the extent to which she seduces with friendship the very people she is striving to cheat, until she overwhelms them with unbearable grief at the suddenness of her desertion
Boethius
As far as possible, join faith to reason.
Boethius
So dry your tears. Fortune has not yet turned her hatred against all your blessings. The storm has not yet broken upon you with too much violence. Your anchors are holding firm and they permit you both comfort in the present, and hope in the future.
Boethius
No man is rich who shakes and groans convinced that he needs more.
Boethius
Love binds people too, in matrimony’s sacred bonds where chaste lovers are met, and friends cement their trust and friendship. How happy is mankind, if the love that orders the stars above rules, too, in your hearts.
Boethius
Among wise men there is no place at all left for hatred. For no one except the greatest of fools would hate good men. And there is no reason at all for hating the bad. For just as weakness is a disease of the body, so wickedness is a disease of the mind. And if this is so, since we think of people who are sick in body as deserving sympathy rather than hatred, much more so do they deserve pity rather than blame who suffer an evil more severe than any physical illness.
Boethius
The greatest misery in adverse fortune is once to have been happy.
Boethius
Wretched men cringe before tyrants who have no power, the victims of their trivial hopes and fears. They do not realise that anger is hopeless, fear is pointless and desire all a delusion. He whose heart is fickle is not his own master, has thrown away his shield, deserted his post, and he forges the links of the chain that holds him.
Boethius
So it follows that those who have reason have freedom to will or not to will, although this freedom is not equal in all of them. […] human souls are more free when they persevere in the contemplation of the mind of God, less free when they descend to the corporeal, and even less free when they are entirely imprisoned in earthly flesh and blood.
Boethius
Infants and young people, as well as the elderly, are so naturally touched with a certain spontaneous feeling by musical modes that there is no age that is indifferent to the delight of sweet singing.
Boethius
Quis legem det amantibus Maior lex amor est sibi. (Who can give law to lovers? Love itself is a greater law.)
Man is so constituted that he then only excels other things when he knows himself.
Boethius
Human perversity, then, makes divisions of that which by nature is one and simple, and in attempting to obtain part of something which has no parts, succeeds in getting neither the part- which is nothing- nor the whole, which they are not interested in.
Boethius
One’s virtue is all that one truly has, because it is not imperiled by the vicissitudes of fortune.
Boethius
He is in no real danger. He merely suffers from a lethargy, a sickness that is common among the depressed. He has forgotten who he really is, but he will recover, for he used to know me, and all I have to do is cloud the mist that beclouds his vision.
Boethius
Music is part of us, and it ennobles or degrades our behavior.
Boethius
Men who give up the common goal of all things that exist, thereby cease to exist themselves. Some may perhaps think it strange that we say that wicked men, who form the majority of men, do not exist; but that is how it is. I am not trying to deny the wickedness of the wicked; what I do deny is that their existence is absolute and complete existence. Just as you might call a corpse a dead man, but couldn’t simply call it a man, so I would agree that the wicked are wicked, but could not agree that they have unqualified existence.
Boethius
Your mind is wise blocked. But the right road awaits you still. Cast out your doubts, your fears and your desires, let go of grief and of hope as well, for where these rule the mind is their subject.
Boethius
We cannot raise the question: How can there be evil if God existswithout raising the second: How can there be good if He exists not?
Boethius
And there is no reason at all for hating the bad. For just as weakness is a disease of the body, so wickedness is a disease of the mind.
Boethius
In other living creatures ignorance of self is nature; in man it is vice.
Boethius
Only he who possesses the ability to penetrate the depths of his own soul can understand music.
Boethius
For in all adversity of fortune the worst sort of misery is to have been happy.
Boethius
And so sovereign Providence has often produced a remarkable effect–evil men making other evil men good. For some, when they think they suffer injustice at the hands of the worst of men, burn with hatred for evil men, and being eager to be different from those they hate, have reformed and become virtuous. It is only the power of God to which evils may also be good, when by their proper use He elicits some good result.
Boethius
But by the same logic as men become just through the possession of justice, or wise through the possession of wisdom, so those who possess divinity necessary become divine. Each happy individual is therefore divine. While only God is so by nature, as many as you may become so by participation.
Boethius,
There is no danger: he is suffering from drowsiness, that disease which attacks so many minds which have been deceived.
Boethius
If happiness is the highest good of a rational nature, and if what can be taken from you in any way cannot be the highest (for what cannot be taken away ranks higher than what can), it is obvious that the fluidity of Fortune cannot hope to win happiness. 24
Boethius
…Whose souls, albeit in a cloudy memory, yet seek back their good, but, drunk men, know not the road home.
Boethius
Ill Fortune is of more use to men than Good Fortune.
Boethius
Thou knowest that these things which I say are true, and that I was never delighted in my own praise, for the secret of a good conscience is in some sort diminished, when by declaring what he hath done, a man receiveth the reward of fame.
Boethius
Then, when she saw me not only answering nothing, but mute and utterly incapable of speech, she gently touched my breast with her hand, and said: ‘There is no danger; these are the symptoms of lethargy, the usual sickness of deluded minds. For awhile he has forgotten himself; he will easily recover his memory, if only he first recognises me. And that he may do so, let me now wipe his eyes that are clouded with a mist of mortal things.
Boethius
No man is so completely happy that something somewhere does not clash with his condition. It is the nature of human affairs to be fraught with anxiety; they never prosper perfectly and they never remain constant.
Boethius
And even if the praise is deserved, it cannot add anything to the philosopher’s feelings: he measures happiness not by popularity, but by the true voice of his own conscience.
Boethius
For in every ill turn of fortune the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy
Boethius
Has the world become so topsy-turvy that a living creature, whom the gift of reason makes divine, believes that his glory lies solely in possession of lifeless goods?
Boethius
A musician is one who, with study and well-calculated rationality… knows how to judge the modes, rhythms, and genres of singing… and of poems.
Boethius
Whoever, serenely led by a well-ordered life, tramples proud fate underfoot and, looking good and bad fortune in the face, can keep an impassive countenance, will not be moved by the rage of the threatening sea, which tosses its topsy-turvy waves to the very bottom, nor by the unstable Vesuvius when from its torn craters it releases tongues of fire mixed with smoke, nor by the flash of the burning lightning accustomed to strike the high towers.
Boethius
Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses. (If you had remained silent, you would have remained a philosopher.)
Boethius
Really, the misfortunes which are now such a cause of grief ought to be reasons for tranquility. For now she has deserted you, and no man can ever be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune.
Boethius
All pleasures have one quality a: They drive their devotees with goads. And a swarm of bees upon the wing, They first pour out their honey loads, Then turn and strike their victim’s heart And leave behind their deep set sting.
Boethius
Would that our age could now return / To those pure ways of leading life. / But now the passion to possess / Burns fiercer than Mount Etna’s fire.
Boethius
What curbs Could check within firm bounds this headlong lust, When even those whose wealth is overflowing The thirst for gain still burns? He is never rich Who trembles and sighs, thinking himself in need.
Boethius
Verily this is the very crown of my misfortunes, that men’s opinions for the most part look not to real merit, but to the event; and only recognise foresight where Fortune has crowned the issue with her approval.
Boethius
If there is anything good about nobility it is that it enforces the necessity of avoiding degeneracy
Boethius
But who to love can give a law? Love unto love itself is law.
Boethius
It is not that a man of virtue is honored because of high office, but rather that the office is honored because of his virtue.
Boethius
Moreover, I do not approve the reasoning by which some think to solve this puzzle. For they say that it is not because God has foreseen the coming of an event that therefore it is sure to come to pass, but, conversely, because something is about to come to pass, it cannot be hidden from Divine providence; and accordingly the necessity passes to the opposite side, and it is not that what is foreseen must necessarily come to pass, but that what is about to come to pass must necessarily be foreseen. But this is just as if the matter in debate were, which is cause and which effect – whether foreknowledge of the future cause of the necessity, or the necessity of the future of the foreknowledge. But we need not be at the pains of demonstrating that, whatsoever be
Boethius
If first you rid yourself of hope and fear you have disarmed the tyrant’s wrath: but whosoever quakes in fear or hope, drifting and losing master, has cast away his shield, has left his place, and binds the chains with which he will be bound.
Boethius
In every adversity of fortune, to have been happy is the most unhappy kind of misfortune.
Boethius
Wherein the main point to be considered is this: the higher faculty of comprehension embraces the lower, while the lower cannot rise to the higher.
Boethius
Moreover, I do not approve the reasoning by which some think to solve this puzzle. For they say that it is not because God has foreseen the coming of an event that therefore it is sure to come to pass, but, conversely, because something is about to come to pass, it cannot be hidden from Divine providence; and accordingly the necessity passes to the opposite side, and it is not that what is foreseen must necessarily come to pass, but that what is about to come to pass must necessarily be foreseen. But this is just as if the matter in debate were, which is cause and which effect – whether foreknowledge of the future cause of the necessity, or the necessity of the future of the foreknowledge. But we need not be at the pains of demonstrating that, whatsoever be
Boethius
It is not that a man of virtue is honored because of high office, but rather that the office is honored because of his virtue.
Boethius
Blest is death that intervenes not In the sweet, sweet years of peace, But unto the broken-hearted, When it is called.
Let the rich man increase his hoard—it is never enough. All that gold, and all those Red Sea pearls that hang from his pudgy neck, they only weigh him down. Out in his fields, hundreds of oxen plough, but still the furrows of care are deep in his creased brow, and he worries about those riches he can’t take with him.
Boethius
For this cause I have become involved in bitter and irreconcilable feuds, and, as happens inevitably, if a man holds fast to the independence of conscience, I have had to think nothing of giving offence to the powerful in the cause of justice.
Boethius
But it is said, when a man comes to high office, that makes him worthy of honour and respect. Surely such offices don’t have the power of planting virtue in the minds of those who hold them, do theyOr of removing vicesNo: the opposite is true. More often than removing wickedness, high office brings it to light, and this is the reason why we are angry at seeing how often high office has devolved upon the most wicked of men –why Catullus calls Nonius a kind of malignant growth, in spite of the office he held.
Boethius
Fortune’s Malice. Mad Fortune sweeps along in wanton pride, Uncertain as Euripus’ surging tide; Now tramples mighty kings beneath her feet; Now sets the conquered in the victor’s seat. She heedeth not the wail of hapless woe, But mocks the griefs that from her mischief flow. Such is her sport; so proveth she her power; And great the marvel, when in one brief hour She shows her darling lifted high in bliss, Then headlong plunged in misery’s abyss.
Boethius
… there is no place whatever for hatred in the minds of the wise. Only an utter idiot would hate good men, and it is irrational to hate the wicked; for if vice is a species of mental disease comparable to illness in the body, since we regard those who are physically ill as wholly undeserving of hatred and deserving rather of pity, then men with minds oppressed by wickedness, a condition more dreadful than any sickness, should all the more be pitied rather than hounded.
Boethius
Avoid vice, therefore, and cultivate virtue; lift up your mind to the right kind of hope, and put forth humble prayers on high.
Boethius
He needs least who measures wealth according to the needs of nature, and not the excesses of ostentation.
Boethius
If dangerous hazards loom close by, Don’t choose a site to please the eye. Play safe. Above all, don’t forget To build your house on rock deep-set. Enclosed
Boethius
Quid autem de corporis uoluptatibus loquar, quarum appetentia quidem plena est anxietatis, satietas uero paenitentiae? (But what shall I say of bodily pleasures, the desire for which is indeed full of anxiety, but the satiety of which is full of penance?)
Boethius
Human souls must needs be comparatively free while they abide in the contemplation of the Divine mind, less free when they pass into bodily form, and still less, again, when they are enwrapped in earthly members. But when they are given over to vices, and fall from the possession of their proper reason, then indeed their condition is utter slavery.
Boethius
For the nature of man is such that he is better than other things only when he knows himself, and yet if he ceases to know himself he is made lower than the brutes. For it is natural for other animals not to have this self-knowledge; in man it is a fault. How far from your true state have you wandered when you think you can be at all improved by the addition of the beauties of other things!
Boethius
All that is known is grasped not conformably to its own efficacy, but rather conformably to the faculty of the knower.
Boethius
O most foolish of men! If Fortune began to be permanent, she would cease to be Fortune.
Boethius
Frequently, a kind of reward for wickedness, it causes great illness and unbearable pain for those who make it their source of enjoyment.
Boethius
The answer is this. It is impossible for the two events I mentioned just now – the rising of the sun and the man walking – not to be happening when they do happen; and yet it was necessary for one of them to happen before it did happen, but not so for the other.
Boethius
It is no wonder then if the winds storm around us on the ocean of this life, since our greatest imperative is to displease the wicked. But we should despise the wicked even if they are a great multitude, for they are governed by no leader, but are blindly pulled in all directions by frantic error.
Boethius
Jeder hat in sich etwas, das man nicht kennt, solange man es nicht erprobt hat; hat man es aber erprobt – schaudert man.
Boethius
When they tottered, their very greatness dragged them down.
Boethius
It is not the walls of your library with their glass and ivory decorations that I am looking for, but the seat of your mind.
Boethius
And the earth transcended brings us the gift of the stars.
Boethius
Oh, stupidest of mortals, if it takes to standing still, it ceases to be the wheel of Fortune.
Boethius
This is why the wise must take a part in public affairs, so the helm of state won’t fall to wicked and criminal men, who would bring ruin and destruction to the good.
Boethius
What right hast thou to talk of ill of Fortune whilst keeping all Fortune’s better gifts?
Boethius
Death passes by the wretched, Shuts his ear and slumbers deep; Will not heed the cry of anguish, Will not close the eyes that weep.
Boethius
There the Lord of kings holds His scepter, governing the reigns of the world. With sure control He drives the swift chariot, the shining judge of all things.
If the road which you have forgotten, but now search for, brings you here, you will cry out: ‘This I remember, this is my own country, here I was born and here I shall hold my place.
Boethius
Kings would to live free from worry, but they can’t. And then they boast of their power! Do you think of a man as powerful when you see him lacking something which he cannot achieveA man who goes about with a bodyguard because he is more afraid than the subjects he terrorizes, and whose claim to power depends on the will of those who serve him?
Boethius
Philosophy has never seen fit to abandon an innocent man with no companion for his journey.
Boethius
Why, it results from our admissions that of all who have attained, or are advancing in, or are aiming at virtue, the fortune is in every case good, while for those who remain in their wickedness fortune is always utterly bad.
Boethius
Why, my child, should I desert youWhy should I not share your labour and the burden you have been saddled with because of the hatred of my nameShould I be frightened by being accusedOr cower in fear as if it were something unprecedentedThis is hardly the first time wisdom has been threatened with danger by the forces of evil.
Boethius
With chaste affections man and wife In solemn wedlock it entwines. Love’s laws most trusty comrades bind. How happy is the human race, 30 If Love, by which the heavens are ruled, To rule men’s minds is set in place!
Boethius
We ought to pray to the Father of all things. To omit to do so would not be laying a proper foundation.
Boethius
Since it is through the possession of happiness that people become happy, and since happiness is in fact divinity, it is clear that it is through the possession of divinity that they become happy. But by the same logic as men become just through the possession of justice, or wise through the possession of wisdom, so those who possess divinity necessarily become divine. Each happy individual is therefore divine. While only God is so by nature, as many as you may become so by participation.
Boethius
I have not been allowed to examine the prosecution’s documents, to which the system gives enormous weight. But even if I had been given access to everything, what would there be to say that would be different from Canius’ reply to Caligula, when that emperor accused him of knowledge of a conspiracy against his person‘Had I known of it,’ Canius answered, ‘you would not.
Boethius
Avoid vice, therefore, and cultivate virtue; lift up your mind to the right kind of hope, and put forth humble prayers on high. A great necessity is laid upon you, if you will be honest with yourself, a great necessity to be good, since you live in the sight of a judge who sees all things.
Boethius
So long as they look only at their own desires and not the order of creation, they think of freedom to commit crimes and the absence of punishment as happy things.
Boethius
But as for you, ye know not how to act aright, unless it be to court the popular breeze, and win the empty applause of the multitude – nay, ye abandon the superlative worth of conscience and virtue, and ask a recompense from the poor words of others. Let me tell thee how wittily one did mock the shallowness of this sort of arrogance. A certain man assailed one who had put on the name of philosopher as a cloak to pride and vain-glory, not for the practice of real virtue, and added: “Now shall I know if thou art a philosopher if thou bearest reproaches calmly and patiently.” The other for awhile affected to be patient, and, having endured to be abused, cried out derisively: “Now, do you see that I am a philosopher?” The other, with biting sarcasm, retorted: “I should have hadst thou held thy peace.
Boethius
Foolish the friends who called me happy then: For falling shows a man stood insecure.
Boethius
Thou deemest Fortune to have changed towards thee; thou mistakest. Such ever were her ways, ever such her nature. Rather in her very mutability hath she preserved towards thee her true constancy. Such was she when she loaded thee with caresses, when she deluded thee with the allurements of a false happiness. Thou hast found out how changeful is the face of the blind goddess.
Boethius
Friends, why did ye once so lightly Vaunt me happy among men? Surely he who so hath fallen Was not firmly founded then.
Boethius
You have the chief spark of your health’s fire, for you have true knowledge of the hand that guides the universe.
Boethius
The sole cause of their tragic sufferings was their obvious and complete contempt of the pursuits of immortal men which my teaching had instilled in them. It is hardly surprising if we are driven by the blasts of storms when our chief aim on this sea of life is to displease wicked men. And though their numbers are great, we can afford to despise them because they have no one to lead them and are carried along only by ignorance which distracts them at random first one way then another. When their forces are in superior numbers, our general conducts a tactical withdrawal of his forces to a strong point, and they are left to encumber themselves with useless plunder. Safe from their furious activity or our ramparts above, we can smile at their efforts to collect all the most useless booty: our citadel cannot fall to the assaults of folly
Boethius
Thou in thy stronghold blest And undisturbed shalt rest; Live all thy days serene, And mock the heavens’ spleen.
Boethius
If you wish to consider, then, the foreknowledge or prevision by which He discovers all things, it will be more correct to think of it not as a kind foreknowledge of the future, but as the knowledge of a never-ending presence.
Boethius
Why, then, ye children of mortality, seek ye from without that happiness whose seat is only within us?
Boethius
For in other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is vice.
Boethius
Providence has furnished things with this most cogent reason for continuance: they must desire life, so long as it is naturally possible for them to continue living. Wherefore in no way mayst thou doubt but that things naturally aim at continuance of existence, and shun destruction.
Boethius
For whenever a man by proclaiming his good deeds receives the recompense of fame, he diminishes in a measure the secret reward of a good conscience.
Boethius
we had given thee such weapons as, if thou hadst not cast them away, would have made thee invincible.
Boethius
So true is it that nothing is wretched, but thinking makes it so, and conversely every lot is happy if borne with equanimity.
Boethius
These it is who kill the rich crop of reason with the barren thorns of passion, who accustom men’s minds to disease, instead of setting them free.
Boethius
For evil purposes are, perchance, due to the imperfection of human nature; that it should be possible for scoundrels to carry out their worst schemes against the innocent, while God beholdeth, is verily monstrous. For this cause, not without reason, one of thy disciples asked, “If God exists, whence comes evilYet whence comes good, if He exists not?
Boethius
those whom wickedness brings down from their human state are sunk so low that they don’t deserve to be called human. Thus it happens that if you saw a man transformed by vices, you couldn’t consider him human.
Boethius
In such a case, I agree with my servant Euripides, who said that a man without children was fortunate in his misfortune.
Boethius
One has abundant riches, but is shamed by his ignoble birth. Another is conspicuous for his nobility, but through the embarrassments of poverty would prefer to be obscure. A third, richly endowed with both, laments the loneliness of an unwedded life. Another, though happily married, is doomed to childlessness, and nurses his wealth for a stranger to inherit. Yet another, blest with children, mournfully bewails the misdeeds of son or daughter. Wherefore, it is not easy for anyone to be at perfect peace with the circumstances of his lot.
Boethius
For truly in adverse fortune the worst sting of misery is to have been happy.
Boethius
One law only standeth fast: Things created may not last.
Boethius
Then said she: ‘This world of ours – thinkest thou it is governed haphazard and fortuitously, or believest thou that there is in it any rational guidance?’ ‘Nay,’ said I, ‘in no wise may I deem that such fixed motions can be determined by random hazard, but I know that God, the Creator, presideth over His work, nor will the day ever come that shall drive me from holding fast the truth of this belief.
Boethius
Why boast ye, then, so loud of race and high ancestral line? If ye behold your being’s source, and God’s supreme design,
Boethius
that states would be happy, either if philosophers ruled them, or if it should so befall that their rulers would turn philosophers.
Boethius
All pleasure hath this property, She woundeth those who have her most. And, unto the angry bee Who hath her pleasant honey lost, She flies away with nimble wing And in our hearts doth leave her sting.
Boethius
If Plenty should pour from her full horn15 wealth abundant as sea-stirred sand, or countless as stars in the shining night sky, nothing stopping her hand— still man would complain of poverty. Even if God answered prayers with gold, heaped honors on those asking, still this gain would seem nothing.16 Their greed only opens new mouths. What could curb such lust when those with riches overflowing thirst for moreA man is never rich, trembling and sighing, believing himself in need.
Boethius
Now, whenever high office has fallen into the hands of wicked men, the disaster has been greater than flood or volcanic eruption.
Boethius
Why do the wretched feel such fearful respect for the ferocious tyrants who rage in vain? Expect nothing, fear nothing: thus you will disarm their impotent fury. But whoever trembles in fear or lust, because he lacks secure self-control, is himself the one who throws down the shield and, giving ground, knots the chains by which he will be dragged.
Boethius
