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The Consolation of Philosophy quotes
11 quotes from The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #14328 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.
Indeed, man is so constituted that he then only excels other things when he knows himself; but he is brought lower than the beasts if he lose this self-knowledge.
Thus all fortune is good fortune; for it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is either useful or just.
For truly I believe that Ill Fortune is of more use to men than Good Fortune.
So true is it that nothing is wretched, but thinking makes it so, and conversely every lot is happy if borne with equanimity.
'Why, then, ye children of mortality, seek ye from without that happiness whose seat is only within us? Error and ignorance bewilder you.
'That absolutely every fortune is good fortune.'
Therefore, withstand vice, practise virtue, lift up your souls to right hopes, offer humble prayers to Heaven.
And again I say, That is no good, which injures its possessor.
Since, then, all things are sought for the sake of the good, it is not these so much as good itself that is sought by all.
'All things, then, desire to be one.'
'And all this being so, the freedom of man's will stands unshaken, and laws are not unrighteous, since their rewards and punishments are held forth to wills unbound by any necessity.