Top 46 Quotes & Sayings by Boethius

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Roman philosopher Boethius.

Last updated on September 18, 2024.

Saint Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly called Boethius, was a Roman senator, consul, magister officiorum, historian and philosopher of the early 6th century. He was born about a year after Odoacer deposed the last Western Roman Emperor and declared himself King of Italy. Boethius entered public service under Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great, who later imprisoned and executed him in 524 on charges of conspiracy to overthrow him.

Roman - Philosopher | 480 - 525

Source: Wikipedia

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

Boethius

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

Boethius

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

Boethius

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

Boethius

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

Boethius

Nothing is miserable unless you think it is so.

Boethius

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so.

Boethius

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

Boethius

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

Boethius

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.

Boethius

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

Boethius

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.

Boethius

Nothing is miserable but what is thought so, and contrariwise, every estate is happy if he that bears it be content.

Boethius

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.

Boethius

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

Boethius

As far as possible, join faith to reason.

Boethius

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.

Boethius

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.

Boethius

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

Boethius

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.

Boethius

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

Boethius

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.

Boethius

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

Boethius

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

Boethius

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.

Boethius

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

Boethius

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

Boethius

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

Boethius

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

Boethius

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

Boethius

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

Boethius

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.

Boethius

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.

Boethius

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.

Boethius

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

Boethius

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

Boethius

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

Boethius

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

Boethius

A person is an individual substance of a rational nature.

Boethius

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

Boethius

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?

Boethius

I scarcely know the meaning of your question; much less can I answer it.

Boethius

The good is the end toward which all things tend.

Boethius

Give me Thy light, and fix my eyes on Thee!

Boethius

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.

Boethius

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

Boethius

Top 46 Quotes & Sayings by Boethius

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