Stephen Mansfield Quote

Abraham Lincoln avoided the extremes of his family’s psychological deformities, but he still suffered from a dark, draining, despair-inducing force that seemed at times to bore into the center of his being. Shortly after Lincoln’s death, Herndon described his slain friend as a sad looking man: his melancholy dripped from him as he walked.17 Townspeople reported that he was indeed the saddest-looking man they had ever known. Lincoln’s friends stood what we now call suicide watchmore than once, and Lincoln himself said that he was careful not to carry a pocketknife lest he sink into a depression—his word for it was hypo—and harm himself. 18 During one episode of his life, he reported, 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 cannot tell; I awfully forbode I shall