
"The Brooklyn Divines." Brooklyn Union (Brooklyn, NY), 1883.
The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse.
"The Brooklyn Divines." Brooklyn Union (Brooklyn, NY), 1883.
George Dennison Prentice http://www.picturehistory.com/product/id/4820, in Prenticeana (1860)
Misattributed
“Peace is the best thing that man may know; peace alone is better than a thousand triumphs”
Pax optima rerum
quas homini novisse datum est, pax una triumphis
innumeris potior, pax custodire salutem
et civis aequare potens revocetur in arcis
tandem Sidonias, et fama fugetur ab urbe
perfidiae, Phoenissa, tua.
Book XI, lines 592–597<!--; spoken by Hanno.-->
Punica
Context: Peace is the best thing that man may know; peace alone is better than a thousand triumphs; peace has power to guard our lives and secure equality among fellow-citizens. Let us then after so long recall peace to the city of Carthage, and banish the reproach of treachery from Dido's city.
A paraphrased variant of this seems to have arisen on the internet around 2007: It is ... a settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute. The United States, while they wish for war with no nation, will buy peace with none.
1810s
Source: Message delivered to Dey Omar Agha, by Isaac Chauncey and William Shaler , summarizing the Treaty with Algiers (1815) http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/bar1815t.asp, and U.S attitudes and actions in the Barbary Wars, in refusing to pay ransom or tribute to pirates of the Barbary States, as quoted in History and Present Condition of Tripoli: With Some Accounts of the Other Barbary States http://books.google.com/books?id=YMwRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA46 (1835) by Robert Greenhow, p. 46
“Perhaps justified violence is better than peace at any price.”
The Uncertain Midnight (1958)
“Peace is only better than war if peace is not hell too. War being hell makes sense.”
The Second Coming (1980)