Best 43 quotes of Boethius on MyQuotes

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

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

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.

A person is an individual substance of a rational nature.

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.

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

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

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

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

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?

He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate, and set proud death beneath his feet, can look fortune in the face, unbending both to good and bad; his countenance unconquered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's my belief that history is a wheel. 'Inconstancy is my very essence,'? says the wheel. Rise up on my spokes if you like but don't complain when you're cast back down into the depths. Good times pass away, but then so do the bad. Mutability is our tragedy, but it's also our hope. The worst of times, like the best, are always passing away.

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.

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.

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

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

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

No man can ever be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune.

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

You know when you have found your prince because you not only have a smile on your face but in your heart as well. Love puts the fun in together, the sad in apart, and the joy in a heart. Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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)

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