Quotation
Last reviewed:
“If you are in possession of yourself, you possess something you would never wish to lose, and something fortune cannot take from you.”
Boethius · Late Roman philosophy · Medieval · c. 524
What does it mean?
What is really one's own, on the usual reading of this speech, cannot be taken away with office, wealth, or fame, and self-possession is the good that survives the fall. A rival reading treats the sentence as Stoic toughness, a demand to feel nothing about prison, but Philosophy does not call the cell pleasant: she says the goods that constituted his happiness were the wrong goods. The English here is a compression of the argument in book two, prose four, not one famous sentence in a standard translation.
Did Boethius really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. A fair compression of Philosophy's claim in Consolation book two, prose four, not a single famous sentence in a standard translation. The argument is secure. The English is a paraphrase and is marked as one.
Where it comes from
The Consolation of Philosophy II, prose 4, compressed from Philosophy's argument
Approximate date: c. 524.
How to use it
When a tenancy in Cardiff ends and the landlord reclaims furniture that was never owned, the inventory is a blunt teacher. List what the reversal can actually remove, and what it cannot: a skill, a promise kept, a judgement that remains. The compressed claim puts effort on the second list without pretending the first list does not hurt.
A mindset reading
Self-possession here is a practice of judgement, not a mood of grit, and Philosophy spends the book teaching the difference between a good fortune can invoice and a good it cannot. Borrowing the line as a motivational caption drops the argument that makes any precise sense of the caption, and toughness without that distinction is a different doctrine.
Understand the philosophy
The Consolation answers an impending execution by relocating happiness, not by redescribing the prison as fine. The key term is self-possession, a good that is not on fortune's books, and the wording in this entry is a fair compression of prose four. The argument belongs to the book, while the shape of one quotable sentence is editorial.
- self
- resilience
- happiness
FAQ
What does it mean?
What is really one's own, on the usual reading of this speech, cannot be taken away with office, wealth, or fame, and self-possession is the good that survives the fall. A rival reading treats the sentence as Stoic toughness, a demand to feel nothing about prison, but Philosophy does not call the cell pleasant: she says the goods that constituted his happiness were the wrong goods. The English here is a compression of the argument in book two, prose four, not one famous sentence in a standard translation.
Did Boethius really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. A fair compression of Philosophy's claim in Consolation book two, prose four, not a single famous sentence in a standard translation. The argument is secure. The English is a paraphrase and is marked as one.
Which work is it in?
The Consolation of Philosophy II, prose 4, compressed from Philosophy's argument Approximate date: c. 524.