Breakfast with Boethius (Book 5)

Coffee and bacon and Boethius, with a napping kitty on my lap. Time for some morning philosophy! Today, we’re finishing Book 5 of Consolation of Philosophy. 

I’m afraid that you’ll grow tired from the side trips and not have the strength to finish your proper course.

Don’t be afraid of that, I said. To learn about the things that delight me most will be like finding a place of rest.

Rational natures could not exist if there were no freedom of the will.

Whatever lives within the preset time goes forward from past events to future ones; and nothing has been created within time in such a way that it can embrace at once the whole course of life. It doesn’t yet grasp tomorrow, but it has already lost yesterday; and in daily life you also live no more than in the moment that changes and passes by.

So let us shun vices and cultivate virtues, lifting our minds to proper hopes and offering humble prayers on high. For, if you wish to speak the truth, a great necessity has been placed upon you men to do good, since you live in front of a judge who sees all things.