The fierce and partial writers of the times, ascribing all virtue to themselves, and imputing all guilt to their adversaries, have painted the battle of the angels and the demons.

Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.

A false modesty is the meanest species of pride.

[The] vain and transitory scenes of human greatness are unworthy of a serious thought.

But the works of man are impotent against the assaults of nature . . .

The monastic studies have tended, for the most part, to darken, rather than to dispel, the cloud of superstition.

Boethius might have been styled happy, if that precarious epithet could be safely applied before the last term of the life of man.