Homo sum, et nihil humani a me alienum puto
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"Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto" ("I am a man, I think nothing human alien to me") is the latin translation of a Greek line from a play by New Comedy playwright Menander that Terence adapted.
The quote became a proverb and throughout the ages was quoted by Cicero and Saint Augustine, but most notably by Seneca:
Seneca ended his seminal exposition of the unity of mankind with a clarion-call:
- "There is one short rule that should regulate human relationships. All that you see, both divine and human, is one. We are parts of the same great body. Nature created us from the same source and to the same end. She imbued us with mutual affection and sociability, she taught us to be fair and just, to suffer injury rather than to inflict it. She bid us extend or hands to all in need of help. Let that well-known line be in our heart and on our lips: Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto."
A nineteenth-century edition of Terence's "The Self-Tormentor" in which the line appears, has this annotation:
It was quoted in a different form by Dostoyevsky ("But you've only to assume that I, too, am a man /et nihil humanum/", Crime and Punishment; "Сатана sum et nihil humanum", The Brothers Karamazov
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