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But if you think that life can be prolonged by the breath of mortal fame, yet when the slow time robs you of this too, then there awaits you but a second death.

— Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

Quodsi putatis longius vitam trahi
mortalis aura nominis,
cum sera vobis rapiet hoc etiam dies
iam vos secunda mors manet.

Original text (Latin)

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Notes from Wikiquote

Poem VII, lines 23-26; translation by W. V. Cooper

Topics

Fame

More quotes by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

In every adversity of fortune, to have been happy is the most unhappy kind of misfortune.

If you would give every man as he deserves, then love the good and pity those who are evil.

I see how happiness and misery lie inseparably in the deserts of good and bad men.

Wherefore not without cause has one of your own followers asked, "If God is, whence come evil things? If He is not, whence come good?"

Nothing is miserable but what is thought so, and contrariwise, every estate is happy if he that bears it be content.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.