The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius

• “…rooted trees ran to hear and running rivers stopped to listen.”

Book 1

• On first seeing Lady Philosophy, she is described as having a “complexion as fresh and glowing as that of a girl,” yet “that she was ancient and that nobody would mistake her for a creature of our time.”

• I think the youthful attraction refers to the light of love, and the ancient nature refers to profound wisdom. Philosophy=loving wisdom

• On her dress was pi (practice) with steps leading above to theta (theory).

• Is practice love? Is theory a formalization of what exists in practice? Is practice informed by theory?

• Lady philosophy on the sad prisoner listening to the Muses: “they have no cures for what ails him. Indeed, what they offer will only make his condition worse! What we want is the fruits of reason, while all they have is useless thorns of intemperate passion. If he listens to their nonsense, he will accustom himself to depression instead of trying to find a cure.”
• Lady Philosophy has been “doing battle forever against proud stupidity.”
• “And even though there are many of them, we can still despise them because they have no principles to lead them and are motivated only by ignorance and whim that lead them now one way and now another.”
• “From our ramparts we look down and laugh at them as they busy themselves carrying away their pointless, cumbersome trophies.”
• “The secret pleasure of doing the right thing is spoiled if a man brags about it.”
• “The world judges actions not on their merit but on their results, which are often a matter of pure chance. Men admire nothing more than success, however achieved.”
• “It isn’t book that are important but the ideas in them, the opinions and principles of times gone by, which is what gives the books their value.”

• “Cast out your doubts, your fears and desires, let go of grief and of hope as well, for where these rule the mind is their subject.”

  • Throwing shade at both grief and hope—likely in the blind pessimism/optimism sense. Doom and utopia bend the mind towards the predicted outcome.
• Anything obtained via luck is not worth having, and in losing those things we lose nothing of importance.
• Do not use privilege produced by luck as the basis of your happiness, for the face of lady fortune is unreliable; “she remains constant to her inconstancy.”
• In worshipping lady fortune, we “spread our sails before the wind, then we must go where the wind takes us and not where we might wish to go.” Luck is fleeting and whimsical, so just as we are graced with good luck, we are burdened with bad luck. Can’t choose one, they’re a package deal.
• “Most people who are extremely lucky in their lives are the most sensitive to any slight adversity, because they aren’t used to having to deal with disappointments and frustrations, and therefore they are the most easily upset.”
• “It seems to me that wealth is more splendid in the spending of it than in the getting of it.”
• “So money is precious not when you have it but when it passes on from you to somebody else, in which case you don’t have it anymore.”
• “Are you not able to find value in yourself? If you could see that you wouldn’t need all those external trinkets.” Do you need all this lifeless stuff to be happy?
• “High office, then, when it is given to a dishonest man, does not make him worthy of it but rather displays his unworthiness to the world.”

Book 3

• “The taste in the mouth of honey is sweeter by far if it follows something bitter.”

• Honey tastes sweeter when it follows something bitter

• “And you, too, must prepare yourself for change, withdraw your neck from the yoke of your false gods and raise your head in order that truth may enter.”
• “And we know that any kingdom, however large, has a border beyond which that particular king does not rule. And wherever his rule ends, that is where his dissatisfaction begins as he realizes his limitation.”
• “Pleasures are alike, tormenting those who pursue their sweetness. Angry bees emerge from their hives where the honeycombs were plundered to swarm and inflict the sharp stings of reproach on guilty hearts.”
• “What is simple and undivided by nature human error manages to divide and distort. What is true and perfect becomes false and imperfect.”
• “See if some spark of truth flies up from the collision.”

Book 4

• Wicked men are destitute of all power, “for why do they abandon virtue and pursue vice? Is it because they have no idea what things are good? But what is weaker than the blindness of ignorance?”
• “Or do they know what is good but nevertheless pursue those things for which they have an uncontrollable desire.” This also makes them weak, for they cannot restrain themselves
• Nice poem about mighty kings in luxurious robes, but beneath heavy chains bind them. The chains include greed, wrath, lust. Nothing satiates their endless desire; their endless desire overthrows them and occupies their thrown, it is their master.
• Poem about a wandering ship whose sails send it to a goddess who offers the crew a drink. They’re turned into animals, losing their voices and transforming their bodies, yet their minds remained conscious of their demise. Metaphor of what it’s like to lose yourself to aimless indulgence and vice.
• “That is why, in the hearts of the wise, there should be no room for hatred. Only a fool would hate good men; and as for the bad, there is no reason to hate them either. Weakness is a disease of the body, and similarly wickedness is a disease of the mind. We feel sympathy rather than hatred for those who are sick, and those who suffer from a disability greater than any physical ailment deserve pity rather than blame.”
• “Beating the winds with their wings to float above us and swim in the lovely liquid air.”
• “Things are known not according to their natures but according to the nature of the one who is comprehending them.”
• “One who lives in time progresses in the present from the past and into the future.”
• “The knife-edge of the present, the brief and fleeting instant.”