The title quotes Ecclesiastes 12:13, in the King James Version of the Bible: Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
[6] After the rupture in their close relationship at the end of 1710, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough wrote to Queen Anne reminding her of "the directions of the author of C with relation to friendship".
[12] This trope was employed by the American hoaxer George Francis Thomas in several conflicting accounts he published of the hermit William Wilson, who lived on one of Lake Superior's Apostle Islands in the 1840s and 1850s.
In one 1888 version, he claimed that the backwoodsman wrote cryptic comments in Latin in the book's margins, and that a page torn from the volume allowed Wilson's daughter to confirm his identity long after his death.
Thomas omitted the daughter and the Latin notations from subsequent versions, but continued to make use of the book in his accounts, leading later writers to pass the claim on as fact as recently as 2008.
[15] Benjamin Franklin wrote, in a letter to his wife, regarding his daughter Sally, "I hope she continues to love going to church, and would have her read over and over again the Whole Duty of Man, and the Lady’s Library.