The Consolation of Philosophy
1897
The Consolation of Philosophy
1897
Translated by H. R. (Henry Rosher) James
A last Roman, a political prisoner, a death sentence. Boethius composed this dialogue in his cell, awaiting execution under the Gothic emperor Theodoric. But instead of despair, something extraordinary happened: Philosophy herself appears to him as a woman, his spiritual nurse, and guides him through a radical reexamination of what we think we want and what we actually need. Alternating between prose and verse, the dialogue strips away the illusions of fortune, power, and material success to ask: what is true happiness, and can it be taken from you? He explores the nature of good and evil, the puzzle of fate and free will, the problem of suffering. And somehow, in the face of execution, he finds genuine peace. For fifteen centuries, this has been the West's answer to adversity. Chaucer translated it. Dante placed Boethius in his Paradise. It taught generations how to face misfortune with dignity. If you have ever lost everything or feared losing it, you are reading the book that has been helping people survive such moments for fifteen hundred years.
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“Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.””
— Boethius
“Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law.””
— Boethius
“Nunc fluens facit tempus,nunc stans facit aeternitatum.(The now that passes produces time, the now that remains produces eternity.)””
— Boethius
“Indeed, the condition of human nature is just this; man towers above the rest of creation so long as he realizes his own nature, and when he forgets it, he sinks lower than the beasts. For other living things to be ignorant of themselves, is natural; but for man it is a defect.””
— 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
“All fortune is good fortune; for it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is either useful or just.””
— Boethius
“And it is because you don't know the end and purpose of things that you think the wicked and the criminal have power and happiness.””
— Boethius
“If I have fully diagnosed the cause and nature of your condition, you are wasting away in pining and longing for your former good fortune. It is the loss of this which, as your imagination works upon you, has so corrupted your mind. I know the many disguises of that monster, Fortune, and the extent to which she seduces with friendship the very people she is striving to cheat, until she overwhelms them with unbearable grief at the suddenness of her desertion””
— Boethius
“No man is rich who shakes and groansConvinced that he needs more.””
— Boethius
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Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-consolation-of-philosophy-3e2afe40-cd81-4252-9f36-a1f835ed1d90.Boethius (1897). The Consolation of Philosophy. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-consolation-of-philosophy-3e2afe40-cd81-4252-9f36-a1f835ed1d90Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-consolation-of-philosophy-3e2afe40-cd81-4252-9f36-a1f835ed1d90.
