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"Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them."
"Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough."
"Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?"
"Don't pray that God's on our side, pray that we're on his side."
"Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition."
"Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived."
"Gentlemen, why don't you laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh, I should die. You need this medicine as much I do."
"He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met."
"He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help."
"How many legs does a dog have if you count his tail as a leg? Four. You can call a tail a leg if you want to, but that doesn't make it a leg."
"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts."
"I am for those means which will give the greatest good to the greatest number."
"I am not concerned that you have fallen; I am concerned that you arise."
"I don't know who my grandfather was; I'm much more concerned to know what his grandson will be."
"I don't like that man. I must get to know him better."
"I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice."
"I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him."
"I will prepare and some day my chance will come."
"I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come."
"I'm not concerned that you have fallen, I'm concerned that you arise."
"If I had six hours to cut down a tree, I'd spend the first four sharpening my axe."
"If I only had an hour to chop down a tree, I would spend the first 45 minutes sharpening my axe."
"If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business."
"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"
"If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee."
"If you don't want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for a while."
"If you look for the bad in people, you will surely find it."
"A house divided against itself cannot stand."
"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing."
"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"
"I don't think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday."
"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
"'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt."
"I have an irrepressible desire to live till I can be assured that the world is a little better for my having lived in it."
"I do not believe the Union will dissolve, I believe it will become all one thing, or all the other."
"If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend."
"Important principles may and must be flexible."
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."
"Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."
"I am a slow walker, but I never walk backwards."
"In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all... Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better... And yet this is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again."
"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues."
"It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him."
"It is doubtful whether his heroism and skill exhibited last Sunday afternoon, has ever been surpassed in the world."
"It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced."
"It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong."
"Let me not be understood as saying that there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed."
"Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."
"My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it."
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
"Neither Heaven nor Hell. It is simply Purgatory."
"No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar."
"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent."
"No man resolved to make the most of himself has time to waste on personal contention."
"No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens."
"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this."
"People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like."
"Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention."
"So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war."
"Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves."
"That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and, hence, is just encouragement to industry and enterprise."
"The ballot is stronger than the bullet."
"The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time."
"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present... we must think anew and act anew."
"The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is why he makes so many of them."
"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
"The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just."
"The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us."
"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty."
"The worst thing you can do for those you love is the things they could and should do themselves."
"Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle."
"Those who would deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, cannot long retain it."
"To ease another's heartache is to forget one's own."
"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."
"Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored."
"Truth is generally the best vindication against slander."
"Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in. That everyone may receive at least a moderate education appears to be an objective of vital importance."
"We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory shall swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of nature."
"What is conservativism? Is it not the aherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?"
"Whatever you are, be a good one."
"When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that is my religion."
"When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and true maxim that 'a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.' So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and which, once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing him of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause is really a good one."
"When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run."
"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."
"Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest."
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, ...let us strive on to finish the work we are in, ...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds."
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds. . . to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."
"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today."
"You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time."
"...and that this country shall have a new birth of freedom, and that this government, of the people, for the people, by the people, shall not perish from the Earth."
"Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm."
"Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.... The prayers of both could not be answered--that of neither has been answered fully."
"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."