Top 60 Boethius Quotes (2024 Update)

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

— Boethius

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

— Boethius

4. “Music is so naturally united with us that we cannot be free from it – even if we so desired.”

— Boethius

5. “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

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6. “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

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

— Boethius

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

— Boethius

9. “Nothing is miserable unless you think it so.”

— Boethius

10. “He who is virtuous is wise; and he who is wise is good; and he who is good is happy.”

— Boethius

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

— Boethius

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

— Boethius

13. “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

14. “And there is no reason at all for hating the bad. For just as weakness is a disease of the body, so wickedness is a disease of the mind.”

— Boethius

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

— Boethius

16. “Avoid vice, therefore, and cultivate virtue; lift up your mind to the right kind of hope, and put forth humble prayers on high.”

— Boethius

17. “Give me Thy light, and fix my eyes on Thee!”

— Boethius

18. “Among wise men there is no place at all left for hatred. For no one except the greatest of fools would hate good men. And there is no reason at all for hating the bad. For just as weakness is a disease of the body, so wickedness is a disease of the mind. And if this is so, since we think of people who are sick in body as deserving sympathy rather than hatred, much more so do they deserve pity rather than blame who suffer an evil more severe than any physical illness.”

— Boethius

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

— Boethius

20. “As far as possible, join faith to reason.”

— Boethius

21. “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

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

— Boethius

23. “All pleasures have one quality alike: They drive their devotees with goads. And like a swarm of bees upon the wing, They first pour out their honey loads, Then turn and strike their victim’s heart And leave behind their deep set sting.”

— Boethius

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

— Boethius

25. “No man is so completely happy that something somewhere does not clash with his condition. It is the nature of human affairs to be fraught with anxiety; they never prosper perfectly and they never remain constant.”

— Boethius

26. “The answer is this. It is impossible for the two events I mentioned just now – the rising of the sun and the man walking – not to be happening when they do happen; and yet it was necessary for one of them to happen before it did happen, but not so for the other.”

— Boethius

27. “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

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

— Boethius

29. “A person is an individual substance of a rational nature.”

— Boethius

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

— Boethius

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

— Boethius

32. “We cannot raise the question: How can there be evil if God exists? without raising the second: How can there be good if He exists not?”

— Boethius

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

— Boethius

34. “Really, the misfortunes which are now such a cause of grief ought to be reasons for tranquility. For now she has deserted you, and no man can ever be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune.”

— Boethius

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

— Boethius

36. “But by the same logic as men become just through the possession of justice, or wise through the possession of wisdom, so those who possess divinity necessary become divine. Each happy individual is therefore divine. While only God is so by nature, as many as you like may become so by participation.”

— Boethius

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

— Boethius

38. “Fortune’s Malice. Mad Fortune sweeps along in wanton pride, Uncertain as Euripus’ surging tide; Now tramples mighty kings beneath her feet; Now sets the conquered in the victor’s seat. She heedeth not the wail of hapless woe, But mocks the griefs that from her mischief flow. Such is her sport; so proveth she her power; And great the marvel, when in one brief hour She shows her darling lifted high in bliss, Then headlong plunged in misery’s abyss.”

— Boethius

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

— Boethius

40. “Has the world become so topsy-turvy that a living creature, whom the gift of reason makes divine, believes that his glory lies solely in possession of lifeless goods?”

— Boethius

41. “If dangerous hazards loom close by, Don’t choose a site to please the eye. Play safe. Above all, don’t forget To build your house on rock deep-set. Enclosed.”

— Boethius

42. “Wherein the main point to be considered is this: the higher faculty of comprehension embraces the lower, while the lower cannot rise to the higher.”

— Boethius

43. “It is nothing serious, only a touch of amnesia that he is suffering, the common disease of deluded minds. He has forgotten for a while who he is, but he will soon remember once he has recognized me. To make it easier for him I will wipe a little of the blinding cloud of worldly concern from his eyes.”

— Boethius

44. “For this cause I have become involved in bitter and irreconcilable feuds, and, as happens inevitably, if a man holds fast to the independence of conscience, I have had to think nothing of giving offence to the powerful in the cause of justice.”

— Boethius

45. “And even if the praise is deserved, it cannot add anything to the philosopher’s feelings: he measures happiness not by popularity, but by the true voice of his own conscience.”

— Boethius

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

— Boethius

47. “The good is the end toward which all things tend.”

— Boethius

48. “Quid autem de corporis uoluptatibus loquar, quarum appetentia quidem plena est anxietatis, satietas uero paenitentiae?”

— Boethius

49. “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

50. “Then, when she saw me not only answering nothing, but mute and utterly incapable of speech, she gently touched my breast with her hand, and said: ‘There is no danger; these are the symptoms of lethargy, the usual sickness of deluded minds. For awhile he has forgotten himself; he will easily recover his memory, if only he first recognises me. And that he may do so, let me now wipe his eyes that are clouded with a mist of mortal things.”

— Boethius