“ What is better for a man, what more worthy of his nature? ”
Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Duties (44 BC). copy citation
| Author | Marcus Tullius Cicero |
|---|---|
| Source | On Duties |
| Topic | |
| Date | 44 BC |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | Translated by Walter Miller |
| Weblink | http://www.constitution.org/rom/de_officiis.htm |
Context
“Therefore, amid all the present most awful calamities I yet flatter myself that I have won this good out of evil — that I may commit to written form matters not at all familiar to our countrymen but still very much worth their knowing. For what, in the name of heaven, is more to be desired than wisdom? What is more to be prized? What is better for a man, what more worthy of his nature? Those who seek after it are called philosophers; and philosophy is nothing else, if one will translate the word into our idiom, than "the love of wisdom." Wisdom, morever, as the word has been defined by the philosophers of old, is "the knowledge of things human and divine and of the causes by which those things are controlled."”
source
