Tout le genre humain n’est qu’une famille dispersée sur la face de toute la terre. Tous les peuples sont frères, et doivent s’aimer comme tels.
Bk. 9, p. 67; translation p. 162.
Les aventures de Télémaque (1699)
“If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth.”
Letter to John T. Stuart (23 January 1841), Collected Works 1:229-30 http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;rgn=div1;view=text;idno=lincoln1;node=lincoln1%3A248
1840s
Context: I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.
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Abraham Lincoln 618
16th President of the United States 1809–1865Related quotes
Letter to Thomas Beard (11 January 1835), in Madeline House, et al., The Letters of Charles Dickens (1965), p. 53
“I was instructor
To the whole universe.
I shall be until the judgement
On the face of the Earth.”
The Tale of Taleisin
“The kindness lavished on dogs, if evenly distributed, would establish peace on earth.”
Featherisms (2008)
Source: Discriminations and Disparities (2018), p. 17.