Boethius Quotes & Sayings

As far as possible, join faith to reason. — 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

So nothing is ever good or bad unless you think it so, and vice versa. All luck is good luck to the man who bears it with equanimity. — 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

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

In other living creatures ignorance of self is nature; in man it is vice. — 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

For in all adversity of fortune the worst sort of misery is to have been happy. — 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

In every kind of adversity, the bitterest part of a man's affliction is to remember that he once was happy. — Boethius

Whose souls, albeit in a cloudy memory, yet seek back their good, but, like drunk men, know not the road home. — 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

There is no danger: he is suffering from drowsiness, that disease which attacks so many minds which have been deceived. — Boethius

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 scarcely know the meaning of your question; much less can I answer it. — Boethius

Music is part of us, and either ennobles or degrades our behavior. — Boethius

Nothing is miserable but what is thought so, and contrariwise, every estate is happy if he that bears it be content. — Boethius

Love has three kinds of origin, namely: suffering, friendship and love. A human love has a corporal and intellectual origin. — Boethius

All fortune is good fortune; for it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is either useful or just. — Boethius

The science of numbers ought to be preferred as an acquisition before all others, because of its necessity and because of the great secrets and other mysteries which there are in the properties of numbers. All sciences partake of it, and it has need of none. — 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

The greatest misery in adverse fortune is once to have been happy. — Boethius

A man content to go to heaven alone will never go to heaven. — Boethius

In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is a vice. — 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

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

He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate ... can look fortune in the face. — Boethius

You have the chief spark of your health's fire, for you have true knowledge of the hand that guides the universe. — Boethius

Man is so constituted that he then only excels other things when he knows himself. — Boethius

Your mind is likewise 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

Contemplate the extent and stability of the heavens, and then at last cease to admire worthless things. — Boethius

Art thou that man,' she cries, 'who, erstwhile fed with the milk and reared upon the nourishment which is mine to give, had grown up to the full vigour of a manly spirit? And yet I had bestowed such armour on thee as would have proved an invincible defence, hadst thou not first cast it away. Dost thou know me? Why art thou silent? Is it shame or amazement that hath struck thee dumb? Would it were shame; but, as I see, a stupor hath seized upon thee.' 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. — 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

No man is rich who shakes and groans
Convinced that he needs more. — 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

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

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

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

The completely simultaneous and perfect possession of
unlimited life at a single moment. — Boethius

Oh teach the mind t' aetherial heights to rise,
And view familiar, in its native skies,
Thy source of good; thy splendor to descry,
And on thy self, undazled, fix her eye.
Oh quicken this dull mass of mortal clay;
Shine through the soul, and drive its clouds away!
For thou art Light. In thee the righteous find
Calm rest, and soft serenity of mind;
Thee they regard alone; to thee they tend;
At once our great original and end,
At once our means, our end, our guide, our way,
Our utmost bound, and our eternal stay! — Boethius

Inconsistency is my very essence; it is the game I never cease to play as I turn my wheel in its ever changing circle, filled with joy as I bring the top to the bottom and the bottom to the top — Boethius

Music is so naturally united with us that we cannot be free from it - even if we so desired. — 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

In omni adversitate fortunae, infelicissimum genus est infortunii fuisse felicem In every adversity of fortune, to have been happy is the most unhappy kind of misfortune. — Boethius

Nunc fluens facit tempus,
nunc stans facit aeternitatum.
(The now that passes produces time, the now that remains produces eternity.) — Boethius

Every man must be content with that glory which he may have at home. — Boethius

If there is a God, whence proceed so many evils? If there is no God, whence cometh any good? — Boethius

Good men seek it by the natural means of the virtues; evil men, however, try to achieve the same goal by a variety of concupiscences, and that is surely an unnatural way of seeking the good. Don't you agree? — Boethius

If there is anything good about nobility it is that it enforces the necessity of avoiding degeneracy — Boethius

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it. — Boethius

I who once wrote songs with keen delight am now by sorrow driven to take up melancholy measures. Wounded Muses tell me what I must write, and elegiac verses bathe my face with real tears. Not even terror could drive from me these faithful companions of my long journey. Poetry, which was once the glory of my happy and flourishing youth, is still my comfort in this misery of my old age. — Boethius

Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law. — 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

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 like may become so by participation. — 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

We cannot raise the question: How can there be evil if God exists? without raising the second: How can there be good if He exists not? — Boethius

He who is virtuous is wise; and he who is wise is good; and he who is good is happy. — Boethius

The good is the end toward which all things tend. — 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

Give me Thy light, and fix my eyes on Thee! — Boethius

Whose happiness is so firmly established that he has no quarrel from any side with his estate of life? — Boethius

One's virtue is all that one truly has, because it is not imperiled by the vicissitudes of fortune. — Boethius

A person is an individual substance of a rational nature. — 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