
“903. Better have an old Man to humour, than a young Rake to break your Heart.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
It is better to be
An old man's darling than a young man's warling.
Part II, chapter 7.
Proverbs (1546)
Variant: It is better to be
An olde mans derlyng, than a yong mans werlyng.
“903. Better have an old Man to humour, than a young Rake to break your Heart.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“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
“Never contract friendship with a man that is not better than thyself.”
“Even a most evil man is better than the devil!”
Source: A Companion to Jan Hus (2015), pp. 201-202; Jan Hus in Booklet against the Cook-priest in response to the rival priest who swore that Hus is worse than any devil.
“A man cannot have a better guide than himself, nor any physic better than a regular life.”
Discourses on the Sober Life
“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”