The Consolation of Philosophy quotes

Thou knowest that what I say is the truth, and that I have never boasted of my good deeds in a spirit of self-praise.

For whenever a man by proclaiming his good deeds receives the recompense of fame, he diminishes in a measure the secret reward of a good conscience.

What issues have overtaken my innocency thou seest. Instead of reaping the rewards of true virtue, I undergo the penalties of a guilt falsely laid to my charge—nay, more than this;

So it is not enough that my devotion to thee should profit me nothing, but thou also must be assailed by reason of the odium which I have incurred.

Verily this is the very crown of my misfortunes, that men’s opinions for the most part look not to real merit, but to the event; and only recognise foresight where Fortune has crowned the issue with her approval.

Whereby it comes to pass that reputation is the first of all things to abandon the unfortunate. I remember with chagrin how perverse is popular report, how various and discordant men’s judgments.

Verily this is the very crown of my misfortunes, that men’s opinions for the most part look not to real merit, but to the event; and only recognise foresight where Fortune has crowned the issue with her approval.

Whereby it comes to pass that reputation is the first of all things to abandon the unfortunate.

I remember with chagrin how perverse is popular report, how various and discordant men’s judgments.

“Now,” said she, “I know another cause of thy disease, one, too, of grave moment.

Thou hast ceased to know thy own nature.

So, then, I have made full discovery both of the causes of thy sickness and the means of restoring thy health.

Thou hast resigned thyself to the sway of Fortune; thou must submit to thy mistress’s caprices. What! art thou verily striving to stay the swing of the revolving wheel?

Oh, stupidest of mortals, if it takes to standing still, it ceases to be the wheel of Fortune.

”

If thou abhorrest her perfidy, turn from her in disdain, renounce her, for baneful are her delusions. The very thing which is now the cause of thy great grief ought to have brought thee tranquillity.

Thou hast been forsaken by one of whom no one can be sure that she will not forsake him.

Or dost thou indeed set value on a happiness that is certain to depart? Again I ask, Is Fortune’s presence dear to thee if she cannot be trusted to stay, and though she will bring sorrow when she is gone?

The sea is permitted to invite with smooth and tranquil surface today, tomorrow to roughen with wave and storm. Shall man’s insatiate greed bind me to a constancy foreign to my character? This is my art, this the game I never cease to play.

I turn the wheel that spins. I delight to see the high come down and the low ascend.

Mount up, if thou wilt, but only on condition that thou wilt not think it a hardship to come down when the rules of my game require it. Wert thou ignorant of my character?

What! art thou but now come suddenly and a stranger to the scene of this life?

Thinkest thou there is any stability in human affairs, when man himself vanishes away in the swift course of time?

It is true that there is little trust that the gifts of chance will abide; yet the last day of life is in a manner the death of all remaining Fortune.

It is true that there is little trust that the gifts of chance will abide; yet the last day of life is in a manner the death of all remaining Fortune.

What difference, then, thinkest thou, is there, whether thou leavest her by dying, or she leave thee by fleeing away?

”

Then said I: “True are thine admonishings, thou nurse of all excellence; nor can I deny the wonder of my fortune’s swift career. Yet it is this which chafes me the more cruelly in the recalling.

For truly in adverse fortune the worst sting of misery is to have been happy.

”

How many are there, dost thou imagine, who would think themselves nigh heaven, if but a small portion from the wreck of thy fortune should fall to them? This very place which thou callest exile is to them that dwell therein their native land.

So true is it that nothing is wretched, but thinking makes it so, and conversely every lot is happy if borne with equanimity.

Who is so blest by Fortune as not to wish to change his state, if once he gives rein to a rebellious spirit? With how many bitternesses is the sweetness of human felicity blent!

“

Why, then, ye children of mortality, seek ye from without that happiness whose seat is only within us?

Error and ignorance bewilder you. I will show thee, in brief, the hinge on which perfect happiness turns. Is there anything more precious to thee than thyself? Nothing, thou wilt say.

Doubtless the fruits of the earth are given for the sustenance of living creatures. But if thou art content to supply thy wants so far as suffices nature, there is no need to resort to fortune’s bounty.

Nature is content with few things, and with a very little of these.

If thou art minded to force superfluities upon her when she is satisfied, that which thou addest will prove either unpleasant or harmful. But, now, thou thinkest it fine to shine in raiment of divers colours;

nor does this fall out undeservedly.

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.

For that other creatures should be ignorant of themselves is natural; in man it shows as a defect. How extravagant, then, is this error of yours, in thinking that anything can be embellished by adornments not its own. It cannot be.

So thou, who now dreadest pike and sword, mightest have trolled a carol ‘in the robber’s face,’ hadst thou entered the road of life with empty pockets.

Oh, wondrous blessedness of perishable wealth, whose acquisition robs thee of security!

”

And if, as happens but rarely, these prerogatives are conferred on virtuous men, it is only the virtue of those who exercise them that pleases.

So it appears that honour cometh not to virtue from rank, but to rank from virtue.

Look, too, at the nature of that power which ye find so attractive and glorious! Do ye never consider, ye creatures of earth, what ye are, and over whom ye exercise your fancied lordship?

Look, too, at the nature of that power which ye find so attractive and glorious! Do ye never consider, ye creatures of earth, what ye are, and over whom ye exercise your fancied lordship?

Suppose, now, that in the mouse tribe there should rise up one claiming rights and powers for himself above the rest, would ye not laugh consumedly?

Yet if thou lookest to his body alone, what creature canst thou find more feeble than man, who oftentimes is killed by the bite of a fly, or by some insect creeping into the inner passage of his system!

Why, in Cicero’s days, as he himself somewhere points out, the fame of the Roman Republic had not yet crossed the Caucasus, and yet by that time her name had grown formidable to the Parthians and other nations of those parts.

Seest thou, then, how narrow, how confined, is the glory ye take pains to spread abroad and extend!

Can the fame of a single Roman penetrate where the glory of the Roman name fails to pass? Moreover, the customs and institutions of different races agree not together, so that what is deemed praiseworthy in one country is thought punishable in another.

Indeed, of what avail are written records even, which, with their authors, are overtaken by the dimness of age after a somewhat longer time? But ye, when ye think on future fame, fancy it an immortality that ye are begetting for yourselves.

Why, if thou scannest the infinite spaces of eternity, what room hast thou left for rejoicing in the durability of thy name?

Verily, if a single moment’s space be compared with ten thousand years, it has a certain relative duration, however little, since each period is definite. But this same number of years—ay, and a number many times as great—cannot even be compared with endless duration;

What price wouldst thou not have given for this service in the fullness of thy prosperity when thou seemedst to thyself fortunate?

Cease, then, to seek the wealth thou hast lost, since in true friends thou hast found the most precious of all riches.

”

Perhaps thou dost not yet grasp my meaning. Strange is the thing I am trying to express, and for this cause I can scarce find words to make clear my thought.

For truly I believe that Ill Fortune is of more use to men than Good Fortune.

For Good Fortune, when she wears the guise of happiness, and most seems to caress, is always lying; Ill Fortune is always truthful, since, in changing, she shows her inconstancy. The one deceives, the other teaches;

What sort of power, then, is this which cannot drive away the gnawings of anxiety, or shun the stings of terror?

Fain would they themselves have lived secure, but they cannot; then they boast about their power!

Dost thou count him to possess power whom thou seest to wish what he cannot bring to pass?

Are friends any protection who have been attached by fortune, not by virtue?

Nay; him whom good fortune has made a friend, ill fortune will make an enemy.

And what plague is more effectual to do hurt than a foe of one’s own household?”

“Well, then, does sovereignty and the intimacy of kings prove able to confer power? Why, surely does not the happiness of kings endure forever? And yet antiquity is full of examples, and these days also, of kings whose happiness has turned into calamity.

How glorious a power, which is not even found effectual for its own preservation!

But if happiness has its source in sovereign power, is not happiness diminished, and misery inflicted in its stead, in so far as that power falls short of completeness?

For, truly, nobility seems to be a sort of reputation coming from the merits of ancestors. But if it is the praise which brings renown, of necessity it is they who are praised that are famous.

Wherefore, the fame of another clothes thee not with splendour if thou hast none of thine own.

So, if there is any excellence in nobility of birth, methinks it is this alone—that it would seem to impose upon the nobly born the obligation not to degenerate from the virtue of their ancestors.”

so it comes to pass that, whenever imperfection is found in any particular, there must necessarily be a perfection in respect of that particular also. For were there no such perfection, it is utterly inconceivable how that so-called imperfection should come into existence.

Nature does not make a beginning with things mutilated and imperfect; she starts with what is whole and perfect, and falls away later to these feeble and inferior productions.

So if there is, as we showed before, a happiness of a frail and imperfect kind, it cannot be doubted but there is also a happiness substantial and perfect.”

For since good and bad, and likewise reward and punishment, are contraries, it necessarily follows that, corresponding to all that we see accrue as reward of the good, there is some penalty attached as punishment of evil.

As, then, righteousness itself is the reward of the righteous, so wickedness itself is the punishment of the unrighteous.

Now, no one who is visited with punishment doubts that he is visited with evil.

He who is light and inconstant, never holding long to one thing, is for all the world like a bird. He who wallows in foul and unclean lusts is sunk in the pleasures of a filthy hog.

So it comes to pass that he who by forsaking righteousness ceases to be a man cannot pass into a Godlike condition, but actually turns into a brute beast.

”

they would refuse the help of advocates, and would commit themselves wholly into the hands of their accusers and judges.

Whence it comes to pass that for the wise no place is left for hatred; only the most foolish would hate the good, and to hate the bad is unreasonable.

For if vicious propensity is, as it were, a disease of the soul like bodily sickness, even as we account the sick in body by no means deserving of hate, but rather of pity, so, and much more, should they be pitied whose minds are …

“Wherefore,” said she, “the wise man ought not to take it ill, if ever he is involved in one of fortune’s conflicts, any more than it becomes a brave soldier to be offended when at any time the trumpet sounds for battle.

The time of trial is the express opportunity for the one to win glory, for the other to perfect his wisdom.

Hence, indeed, virtue gets its name, because, relying on its own efficacy, it yieldeth not to adversity. And ye who have taken your stand on virtue’s steep ascent, it is not for you to be dissolved in delights or enfeebled by pleasure;

ye close in conflict—yea, in conflict most sharp—with all fortune’s vicissitudes, lest ye suffer foul fortune to overwhelm or fair fortune to corrupt you.

Hold the mean with all your strength.

Whatever falls short of this, or goes beyond, is fraught with scorn of happiness, and misses the reward of toil. It rests with you to make your fortune what you will. Verily, every harsh-seeming fortune, unless it either disciplines or amends, is punishment.”

Hold the mean with all your strength. Whatever falls short of this, or goes beyond, is fraught with scorn of happiness, and misses the reward of toil.

It rests with you to make your fortune what you will.

Verily, every harsh-seeming fortune, unless it either disciplines or amends, is punishment.”

See’st thou, then, how all things in cognizing use rather their own faculty than the faculty of the things which they cognize?

Nor is this strange; for since every judgment is the act of the judge, it is necessary that each should accomplish its task by its own, not by another’s power.

”

“God is eternal; in this judgment all rational beings agree. Let us, then, consider what eternity is. For this word carries with it a revelation alike of the Divine nature and of the Divine knowledge.

Now, eternity is the possession of endless life whole and perfect at a single moment.

What this is becomes more clear and manifest from a comparison with things temporal.

For whatever lives in time is a present proceeding from the past to the future, and there is nothing set in time which can embrace the whole space of its life together.

Tomorrow’s state it grasps not yet, while it has already lost yesterday’s; nay, even in the life of today ye live no longer than one brief transitory moment.

Whatever, therefore, is subject to the condition of time, although, as Aristotle deemed of the world, it never have either beginning or end, and its life be stretched to the whole extent of time’s infinity, it yet is not such as rightly to be thought …

“

And yet, if we may without unfitness compare God’s present and man’s, just as ye see certain things in this your temporary present, so does He see all things in His eternal present.

Wherefore this Divine anticipation changes not the natures and properties of things, and it beholds things present before it, just as they will hereafter come to pass in time.

For the former necessity is not imposed by the thing’s own proper nature, but by the addition of a condition.

No necessity compels one who is voluntarily walking to go forward, although it is necessary for him to go forward at the moment of walking.

In the same way, then, if Providence sees anything as present, that must necessarily be, though it is bound by no necessity of nature. Now, God views as present those coming events which happen of free will.