
“If goodness can't come from bad things, it makes bad things unbearable.”
Source: Love Is the Higher Law
Address to the Springfield Washingtonian Temperance Society (22 February 1842). Frequently misquoted as "It has long been recognized that the problems with alcohol relate not to the use of a bad thing, but to the abuse of a good thing." http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/temperance.htm
1840s
“If goodness can't come from bad things, it makes bad things unbearable.”
Source: Love Is the Higher Law
"It's written by Charles Grosvenor Osgood (1871-1964), as part of a 1917 preface to Boswell's 'Life of Johnson.'"
The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page http://www.samueljohnson.com/apocryph.html#2 Retrieved 2013-07-07
Misattributed
2000s, Is Diversity Good? (2003)
As quoted in Epistulae morales ad Lucilium by Seneca, Epistle LXXXVII (trans. R. M. Gummere)
Source: The Paris Review interview (1981), p. 338
Source: All That Matters (1922), p.50 - Clinching the Bolt, stanza 3.