Music is so naturally united with us that we cannot be free from it - even if we so desired.
BoethiusContemplate the extent and stability of the heavens, and then at last cease to admire worthless things.
BoethiusBalance 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.
BoethiusGood 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?
BoethiusSo 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.
BoethiusIt'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.
BoethiusWretched 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.
BoethiusNothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.
BoethiusOne's virtue is all that one truly has, because it is not imperiled by the vicissitudes of fortune.
Boethius...Whose souls, albeit in a cloudy memory, yet seek back their good, but, like drunk men, know not the road home.
BoethiusI 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.
BoethiusWhose happiness is so firmly established that he has no quarrel from any side with his estate of life?
BoethiusInconsistency 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
BoethiusSo 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.
BoethiusIn 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.
BoethiusIf there is anything good about nobility it is that it enforces the necessity of avoiding degeneracy.
BoethiusYou 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.
BoethiusIf there is a God, whence proceed so many evils? If there is no God, whence cometh any good?
BoethiusNunc fluens facit tempus,nunc stans facit aeternitatum.(The now that passes produces time, the now that remains produces eternity.)
BoethiusLove has three kinds of origin, namely: suffering, friendship and love. A human love has a corporal and intellectual origin.
BoethiusHe 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.
BoethiusNothing is miserable but what is thought so, and contrariwise, every estate is happy if he that bears it be content.
BoethiusThe 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.
BoethiusIn every kind of adversity, the bitterest part of a man's affliction is to remember that he once was happy.
BoethiusAll fortune is good fortune; for it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is either useful or just.
Boethius