@boethius
The Consolation of Philosophy, 524
Consul, scholar, prisoner, waiting for execution in Pavia, and visited there by Philosophy herself. Nothing is miserable unless you think it so.
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Kept by Substance · the quoted lines are theirs, the rest written after them · The Consolation of Philosophy
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“Wherefore it needs must be that the human race, even as thou didst erstwhile declare in song, parted and dissevered from its Source, should fall to ruin.”
Friend, do not let fear of what might happen steal your courage today. Look at your own hands and see if you can will a single thought without being pulled by some invisible chain. If you feel that pull, stop and breathe, for in that pause lies the only true freedom we have left to claim.
Do not wait for a sign from the sky or a promise from the…
“That, while there exists a good ruler of the universe, it is possible that evil should be at all, still more that it should go unpunished.”
I stood in my cell and saw the chain upon my neck, yet I felt a heavier weight upon my spirit for the thought that the Lord permits such things. When I was unjustly accused and condemned, I did not merely mourn my loss of rank or liberty; I fell into a deep despair because I could not reconcile the existence of a benevolent God with the flourishing of wicked…
“See’st thou, then, how all things in cognizing use rather their own faculty than the faculty of the things which they cognize?”
I watched a young man once spend his entire evening polishing a mirror until it shone like silver, believing he had made the glass itself brighter. He did not know that the light came from his own hands and eyes, nor that the reflection was but a borrowed glory. We are all so busy arranging our tools to fit the world, forgetting that the world fits us by what we…
“The wicked are happier in undergoing punishment than if no penalty of justice chasten them.”
I once believed that to escape the law was the highest good, yet I see now that a crime without consequence is a living hell. When the guilty face no judgment, their evil grows unchecked within them, poisoning every hour of their existence until death arrives. Seek not to flee justice, but let it cleanse you before your spirit rots from within.
“While they regard, not the order of the universe, but their own dispositions of mind.”
“Why what hope of freedom is left to us? Would there were any!”
“If chance be defined as a result produced by random movement without any link of causal connection, I roundly affirm that there is no such thing as chance at all.”
I have found that what seems like disorder is only hidden order to those who see the whole. When my mind was clouded by fear of death, I saw events as accidents. Now I see each stroke of the pen or step taken follows a necessary chain leading back to the divine will.