Boethius

boethiusSomething can be called individual in various ways:
that is called individual which cannot be divided at all, such as unity or spirit (i);
that which cannot be divided because of its hardness, such as steel, is called individual (ii);
something is called individual, the specific designation of which is not applicable to anything of the same kind, such as Socrates (iii).

3 thoughts on “Boethius

  1. shinichi Post author

    Nothing is miserable unless you think it is so.

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

    The knowledge of music makes the musician, of medicine a physician, and of rhetorics a rhetorician.

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

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

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

    He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate, can look fortune in the face.

    Let not your spirit eat itself away for you are set in the sphere that is common to all, let your desire therefore be to live with your own lot of life, a subject of the kingdom of the world.

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

    Speak out, hide it not in thy heart.

    The nature of things consists in not mixing its effects with things of opposite qualities, and in voluntarily repelling what is repugnant or hurtful to it.

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

    Variant: Who shall set a law to lovers? Love is a greater law unto itself.

    It’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 time pass away, but then so do the bad.

    Mutability is our tragedy, but it’s also our hope. The worst of time, like the best, are always passing away.

    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 coutenance unconquered he can shew. The rage and threatenings of the sea will not move him though they stir from its depths the upheaving swell: Vesuvius’s furnaces may never so often burst forth, and he may send rolling upwards smoke and fire; the lightning, whose wont it is to smite down lofty towers, may flash upon its way, but such men shall they never move. Why then stand they wretched and aghast when fierce tyrants rage in impotence? Fear naught, and hope naught: thus shall you have a weak man’s rage disarmed. But whose fears with trembling, or desires aught from them, he stands not firmly rooted, but dependent: thus has he trown away his shield: he can be rooted up, and he links for himself the very chain whereby he may be dragged.

    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?

    What if my changing nature is itself a reason that you should hope for better things?

    Ah! hapless state of human race! How quick do all their pleasures pass! And too, too weak their minds to bear. Life’s varied scenes of woe and care.

    A man content to go to heaven alone will never go to heaven.

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