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.
And we must beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike out these and similar passages, not because they are unpoetical, or unattractive to the popular ear, but because the greater the poetical charm in them, the less are they meet for the ears of boys and men who are meant to be free, and who should fear slavery more than death.
All great and precious things are lonely.
From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.
Ah, not to be cut off, not through the slightest partition shut out from the law of the stars. The inner -- what is it? if not the intensified sky, hurled through with birds and deep with the winds of homecoming.
When the evening was over, Anne could not be amused…nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.
The colour of the skin is in no way connected with strength of the mind or intellectual powers.
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