Boethius
Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius, commonly called Boethius, was a Roman senator, consul, magister officiorum, and philosopher of the early 6th century. He was born four years after Odoacer deposed the last Roman Emperor and declared himself King of Italy, and entered public service under Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great, who later imprisoned and executed him in 524 on charges of conspiracy to overthrow him. While jailed, Boethius composed his Consolation of Philosophy, a philosophical treatise on fortune, death, and other...
NationalityRoman
ProfessionPhilosopher
god eye light
Give me Thy light, and fix my eyes on Thee!
mean men goal
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?
confidence ignorance men
In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is a vice.
bears miserable estates
Nothing is miserable but what is thought so, and contrariwise, every estate is happy if he that bears it be content.
valentines-day fun heart
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.
reason
As far as possible, join faith to reason.
men fortune forsaken
No man can ever be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune.
happiness depression adversity
For in all adversity of fortune the worst sort of misery is to have been happy.
avoiding nobility ifs
If there is anything good about nobility it is that it enforces the necessity of avoiding degeneracy.
single-mom perfect moments
The completely simultaneous and perfect possession of unlimited life at a single moment.
music song real
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.
memories home men
...Whose souls, albeit in a cloudy memory, yet seek back their good, but, like drunk men, know not the road home.
blood soul mind
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.
fate destiny feet
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.