Book I, section 42. Translation by Cyrus R. Edmonds (1873), p. 73
De Officiis – On Duties (44 BC)
Omnium autem rerum, ex quibus aliquid adquiritur, nihil est agri cultura melius, nihil uberius, nihil dulcius, nihil homine libero dignius.
“Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge.”
“Nothing was better for you than humiliation, for there was nothing you felt more deeply.”
J. Agee, trans. (1989), p. 130
Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock] (1987)
“There's nothing better than cake but more cake.”
“There is nothing better or more necessary than love.”
Note to Stanza 28 part 1
Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom, Notes to the Stanzas
“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”
“For a man wins nothing better than a good wife, and, again, nothing worse than a bad one.”
Source: Works and Days (c. 700 BC), line 702.
“As nothing is more easy than to think, so nothing is more difficult than to think well.”
First Century, sect. 8.
Centuries of Meditations
“It is far better to become something than to remain anything but become nothing.”
Source: Books, Beyond Order (2021), p. 188
“There is nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.”
According to The quote verifier: who said what, where, and when (2006), Keyes, Macmillan, p. 91 ISBN 0312340044 , the cover of a trade magazine once credited this observation to Churchill, but it dates back well into the nineteenth century, and has been variously attributed to Henry Ward Beecher, Oliver Wendell Holmes, w:Theodore Roosevelt, w:Thomas Jefferson, w:Will Rogers and Lord Palmerston, among others. One documented use in Social Silhouettes (1906) by George William Erskine Russell, p. 218 wherein a character attributes the saying to Lord Palmerston.
Misattributed
“There's nothing more dangerous than someone who wants to make the world a better place.”
Existencilism (2002)
