I hope these notes will help you tackle this group of proverbs in Latin Via Proverbs. This group features another set of proverbial sayings based on the comparative form of the adjective.
Please note: to read the proverbs in Latin, you need to acquire a copy of the book from lulu.com! What I am providing here in the blog are notes to help people who are making their way through the book either in a Latin class or on their own.
Group 54
713. There is nothing greater than the infinite. (This is a commonplace of medieval philosophical and theological writing.)
714. Nothing is more powerful than gold. (You can find this saying in Ovid.)
715. Nothing is more welcome than peace. (This saying is adapted from Augustine.)
716. Nothing is more violent than fire and water. (Compare the English saying, "Fire and water are good servants, but bad masters.")
717. Nothing is more useful than sun and salt. (Notice the lovely play on words in the Latin, sole...sale. You can find this saying in Pliny's Natural History.)
718. Nothing is more useful than silence. (You can see this saying illustrated in the emblems of Otto Vaenius.)
719. Nothing is more true than truth. (This lovely play on words is the de Vere family motto!)
720. Nothing is more certain than death. (Compare, of course, the English saying, "Nothing's sure but death and taxes," ) Nihil morte certius.
721. Nothing is more swift than the years. (You can find this saying in Ovid's Metamorphoses.)
722. Nothing is more swift than the mind. (You can find this saying in Cicero's Tusculan Disputations.)
723. Noting is more quick than thought. (You can find this saying in Cicero's treatise, the Orator.)
724. Nothing is more quick than rumor. (The swiftness of rumor is highlighted in many Latin sayings, such as fama volat, "rumor flies," and so on.)
725. Nothing is worse than an ungrateful man. (A fuller form of this saying, as found in an epigram of Ausonius is nil homine terra peius ingrato creat, "the earth creates nothing worse than an ungrateful man.")
726. Nothing is more blessed than a blessed death. (This was a motto of King Frederick III of Austria.)
727. Nothing is more treacherous than a flatterer. (This is a motto appended to the fable of the fox and the crow in an 1815 edition of Phaedrus published by Petrus Didot.)
728. No thing is more inappropriate than an inappropriate laugh. (This is a line from a poem by Catullus.)
This blog post is part of an evolving online guide for users of the book Latin Via Proverbs.
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