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
eternity produce remains
Nunc fluens facit tempus,nunc stans facit aeternitatum.(The now that passes produces time, the now that remains produces eternity.)
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.
single-mom perfect moments
The completely simultaneous and perfect possession of unlimited life at a single moment.
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.
home men may
Every man must be content with that glory which he may have at 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.
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.
happiness sides quarrels
Whose happiness is so firmly established that he has no quarrel from any side with his estate of life?
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.