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
home men may
Every man must be content with that glory which he may have at home.
intellectual suffering love-and-friendship
Love has three kinds of origin, namely: suffering, friendship and love. A human love has a corporal and intellectual origin.
happiness depression adversity
For in all adversity of fortune the worst sort of misery is to have been happy.
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.
memories home men
...Whose souls, albeit in a cloudy memory, yet seek back their good, but, like drunk men, know not the road home.
aggravation behavior music-is
Music is part of us, and either ennobles or degrades our behavior.
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.
men knows
Man is so constituted that he then only excels other things when he knows himself.
avoiding nobility ifs
If there is anything good about nobility it is that it enforces the necessity of avoiding degeneracy.
bears miserable estates
Nothing is miserable but what is thought so, and contrariwise, every estate is happy if he that bears it be content.
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?
acceptance fate faces
He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate ... can look fortune in the face.
goodness ends all-things
The good is the end toward which all things tend.
men fortune forsaken
No man can ever be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune.