Boethius

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

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

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

“For in every ill-turn of fortune the most unhappy sort of misfortune is to have been happy.”

“Why then, O mortals, do you seek happiness outside yourselves, when it lies within?”

“So, if you are master of yourself, you will be in possession of that which you will never wish to lose and which Fortune cannot take from you.”

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

“The human race is a holy thing. The greatest reverence is due to a man.”

“Providence is the divine reason itself, which is set at the head of all things and disposes all things.”

“A man is happy, not if he lives in the way he wishes, but if he wishes for what is right.”

“To be is to be good.”

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

“Eternity is the possession of life, endless and perfect, all at once.”

“Is there anything more precious to you than your own self?”

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

“It is the nature of the wise to seek to conquer fortune, not to be conquered by it.”

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

“For the nature of all human things is to be mutable.”