Boethius Consolation Of Philosophy Quotes

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Ill Fortune is of more use to men than Good Fortune.

Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

For in every ill turn of fortune the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy

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.

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.

И тъй, не е за чудене, че в бурното море на живота ни блъскат силни ветрове, нас, на които преди всичко е писано да не се нравим на порочните хора.

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.

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.

All pleasures have one quality alike: They drive their devotees with goads. And like 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.

المكيدة الكامنة في صلب الحياة هي أن لذة الإشباع تأتي دائمًا أقل بكثير مما وعدنا به الجوع

Avoid vice, therefore, and cultivate virtue; lift up your mind to the right kind of hope, and put forth humble prayers on high.

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.

But who to love can give a law? Love unto love itself is law.

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.

Että oli onnellinen, se on kaikista kohtalon tuottamista vastoinkäymisistä kaikkein viheliäisin onnettomuuksien laji.

For many have won a great name through the mistaken beliefs of the multitude—and what can be imagined more shameful than that?

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

Jeder hat in sich etwas, das man nicht kennt, solange man es nicht erprobt hat; hat man es aber erprobt – schaudert man.

Quid autem de corporis uoluptatibus loquar, quarum appetentia quidem plena est anxietatis, satietas uero paenitentiae?

Frequently, like a kind of reward for wickedness, it causes great illness and unbearable pain for those who make it their source of enjoyment.

he needs least who measures wealth according to the needs of nature, and not the excesses of ostentation.

all that is known is grasped not conformably to its own efficacy, but rather conformably to the faculty of the knower.

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.

O most foolish of men! If Fortune began to be permanent, she would cease to be Fortune.

Orpheus backwards turned his sight And looking lost her twice to fate. For you the legend I relate, You who seek the upward way To lift your mind into the day; For who gives in and turns his eye Back to darkness from the sky, Loses while he looks below All that up with him may go.

It is nothing serious, only a touch of amnesia that he is suffering, the common disease of deluded minds. He has forgotten for a while who he is, but he will soon remember once he has recognized me. To make it easier for him I will wipe a little of the blinding cloud of worldly concern from his eyes.

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.

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.

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.

Ah! then why burns man's restless mind Truth's hidden portals to unclose? Knows he already what he seeks? Why toil to seek it, if he knows? Yet, haply if he knoweth not, Why blindly seek he knows not what? [Q] Who for a good he knows not sighs? Who can an unknown end pursue? How find? How e'en when haply found Hail that strange form he never knew? Or is it that man's inmost soul Once knew each part and knew the whole?

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.

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.

No one could doubt that God is omnipotent.’ ‘No one, at any rate, who is in his right mind would have any doubt about it.’ ‘But there is nothing that an omnipotent power could not do?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then, can God do evil?’ ‘No.’ ‘So that evil is nothing, since that is what He cannot do who can do anything.

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.' '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.' 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.

Should Plenty pour from cornucopia full As much in riches as the sand Stirred up by wind-whipped seas, or as the countless stars That shine in the clear night sky, And never stay her hand, Still would mankind not cease Complaining of their wretchedness. Even were God with much gold prodigal, Answering men's prayers, And heaped bright honors on those wanting them, Their gains would seem to them Nothing: ever their cruel gain-devouring greed Opens new maws. 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.

When they tottered, their very greatness dragged them down.

Thou in thy stronghold blest And undisturbed shalt rest; Live all thy days serene, And mock the heavens' spleen.

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.

What right hast thou to talk of ill of Fortune whilst keeping all Fortune's better gifts?

Nature is content with few things, and with a very little of these.

We ought to pray to the Father of all things. To omit to do so would not be laying a proper foundation.

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.

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

Se vede bine că niciodată binelui nu-i va lipsi răsplata și răului pedeapsa.

Lăcomia face oamenii urâți, iar dărnicia străluciți.

Dacă vrea puternic ca să fie-oricine Să se stăpânească mai întâi pe sine.

Lumina ce e-n ceruri putere și mărire Pe suflet îl ferește de neagră prăbușire.

Oh, stupidest of mortals, if it takes to standing still, it ceases to be the wheel of Fortune

Friends, why did ye once so lightly Vaunt me happy among men? Surely he who so hath fallen Was not firmly founded then

defence,

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.

Foolish the friends who called me happy then: For falling shows a man stood insecure.

With domineering hand she moves the turning wheel, Like currents in a treacherous bay swept to and fro: Her ruthless will has just deposed once fearful kings While trustless still, from low she lifts a conquered head; No cries of misery she hears, no tears she heeds, But steely hearted laughs at groans her deeds have wrung. Such is a game she plays, and so she tests her strength; Of mighty power she makes parade when one short hour Sees happiness from utter desolation grow. (A Consolation of Philosophy, Book II, translated by V.E. Watts)

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!

What curse shall I call down On hearts so dull? May they the race still run For wealth and high renown! And when with much ado The false good they have grasped—ah, then too late!— May they discern the true!

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!

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.

When rude Boreas' oppresses, Fall the leaves; they reappear, Wooed by Zephyr's soft caresses. Fields that Sirius burns deep grown By Arcturus' watch were sown: Each the reign of law confesses, Keeps the place that is his own.

... 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.

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

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 they? Or of removing vices? No: 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.

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.

And further, God should not be regarded as older than His creations by any period of time, but rather by the peculiar property of His own single nature. For the infinite changing of temporal things tries to imitate the ever simultaneously present immutability of His life: it cannot succeed in imitating or equalling this, but sinks from immutability into change, and falls from the single directness of the present into an infinite space of future and past. And since this temporal state cannot possess its life completely and simultaneously, but it does, in the same manner, exist forever without ceasing, it therefore seems to try in some degree to rival that which it cannot fulfill or represent, for it binds itself to some sort of present time out of this small and fleeting moment; but inasmuch as this temporal present bears a certain appearance of that abiding present, it somehow makes those, to whom it comes, seem to be in truth what they imitate. But since this imitation could not be abiding, the unending march of time has swept it away, and thus we find that it has bound together, as it passes, a chain of life, which it could not by abiding embrace in its fullness. And thus if we would apply proper epithets to those subjects, we can say, following Plato, that God is eternal, but the universe is continual.

Why, my child, should I desert you? Why should I not share your labour and the burden you have been saddled with because of the hatred of my name? Should I be frightened by being accused? Or cower in fear as if it were something unprecedented? This is hardly the first time wisdom has been threatened with danger by the forces of evil.

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. For when they let their gaze fall from the light of highest truth to the lower world where darkness reigns, soon ignorance blinds their vision; they are disturbed by baneful affections, by yielding and assenting to which they help to promote the slavery in which they are involved, and are in a manner led captive by reason of their very liberty.

Kings would like 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 achieve? A 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?

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.

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.

You would not search the woodside gay To pick a springtime flower When all the shuddering country groans Before the North Wind's power. Nor would you seek with greedy hand To pluck your vines in May; The wine god gives his gift of grapes When Autumn's on the way. For God has fixed the season's tasks And each receives its own: No power is free to disarray The order God has shown.

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.

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.

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

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 like, and who their friends are. Surely, in your time of trouble, you must have learned who were your real friends.

În vremea de-altădată fericiţi, Şi pe mănoase ţarini mulţumiţi, C-o viaţă fără lux moleşitor, Obişnuiau s-alunge foamea lor Pe-atunci oamenii cu ghinzi uşoare. Ei nu ştiau ca miere curgătoare S-amestece în al lui Bacchus vin, Nici să cufunde-n tyrian venin. Strălucitorul fir al Serilor. Aveau pe iarbă somn odihnitor, În rîuri băutură săţioasă, Sub pini înalţi o umbră răcoroasă. Pe mare omul nu se avînta, Nici după treburi încă nu mergea Să vadă, ca un oaspe, ţărmuri noi, Pe-atunci tăcea trompeta de război. Şi sângele vărsat de ură grea Temute arme încă nu păta. De ce voia grozava nebunie Să poarte armele cu duşmănie, Când rănile ce le prieinuia Răsplata sângelui nu aducea? O, de ne-am putea întoarce-odată La obiceiurile de-altădată! Dar dragostea febrilă de-a avea Decît al Aetnei foc este mai rea. Vai, cine-a fost cel ce a dezgropat Întâiu bucăţi de aur blestemat Şi-atîtea pietre preţioase care Ne-aduc pericole şi-ngrijorare?

God is eternal; in this judgment all rational beings agree. Let us, then, consider what eternity is. For this word carries with it a revelation alike of the Divine nature and of the Divine knowledge. Now, eternity is the possession of endless life whole and perfect at a single moment. What this is becomes more clear and manifest from a comparison with things temporal. For whatever lives in time is a present proceeding from the past to the future, and there is nothing set in time which can embrace the whole space of its life together. To-morrow's state it grasps not yet, while it has already lost yesterday's; nay, even in the life of to-day ye live no longer than one brief transitory moment. Whatever, therefore, is subject to the condition of time, although, as Aristotle deemed of the world, it never have either beginning or end, and its life be stretched to the whole extent of time's infinity, it yet is not such as rightly to be thought eternal. For it does not include and embrace the whole space of infinite life at once, but has no present hold on things to come, not yet accomplished.