Source: A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard (1911), p. 18.
“People are more inclined to believe in bad intentions than in good ones.”
La gente è più acconcia a credere il male che il bene.
Third Day, Sixth Story
The Decameron (c. 1350)
Source: The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (2004), Chapter 56 “At Last, the Box, Explained” (p. 319)
Vice and Virtue, iii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality
“Good people are only half as good, and bad people only half as bad, as other people regard them.”
A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard (1911)
“When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that's my religion.”
Quoted in 3:439 Herndon's Lincoln (1890), p. 439 http://books.google.com/books?id=rywOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA439&dq=%22when+i+do+good+i+feel+good%22: Inasmuch as he was so often a candidate for public office Mr. Lincoln said as little about his religious code as possible, especially if he failed to coincide with the orthodox world. In illustration of his religious code I once heard him say that it was like that of an old man named Glenn, in Indiana, whom he heard speak at a church meeting, and who said: "When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that's my religion."
Posthumous attributions
