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 countenance unconquered.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of accepting life's circumstances and facing both fortune and misfortune with a strong demeanor.
Boethius' quote reflects the Stoic philosophy of accepting fate with tranquility. It suggests that a person who is at peace with their life circumstances, who can confront both good and bad fortune without being swayed emotionally, possesses an unconquerable spirit. This resilience allows one to maintain dignity and strength in the face of life's challenges.
In practice
During a motivational speech about overcoming adversity.
And no renown can render you well-known:_x000D_ For if you think that fame can lengthen life _x000D_ By mortal famousness immortalized,_x000D_ The day will come that takes your fame as well,_x000D_ And there a second death for you awaits.
Man is so constituted that he then only excels other things when he knows himself.
Every man must be content with that glory which he may have at home.
For in all adversity of fortune the worst sort of misery is to have been happy.
I who once wrote songs with keen delight am now by sorrow driven to take up melancholy measures. Wounded Muses tell me what I must write, and elegiac verses bathe my face with real tears. Not even terror could drive from me these faithful companions of my long journey. Poetry, which was once the glory of my happy and flourishing youth, is still my comfort in this misery of my old age.
Contemplate the extent and stability of the heavens, and then at last cease to admire worthless things.
Hate begets hate, violence engenders violence, hypocrisy is answered by hypocrisy, war generates war, and love creates love.
No idea is so antiquitated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not some day be antiquitated . . . to seize the flying thought before it escapes us is our only touch with reality.
The One remains, the many change and pass;_x000D_ _x000D_ Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;_x000D_ _x000D_ Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,_x000D_ _x000D_ Stains the white radiance of Eternity,_x000D_ _x000D_ Until Death tramples it to fragments.
Simply from the fact that we have regarded a thing with the emotion of pleasure or pain, though that thing be not the efficient cause of the emotion, we can either love or hate it.
Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signaling to be let out.
If the Lord counts the natural beauty of the body inferior to that of the soul, what thinks He of spurious beauty, rejecting utterly as He does all falsehood?
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