“It is not best to swap horses while crossing the river.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower when I thought a flower would grow.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it." I am loath to close. 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 chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, 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.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“If we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
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Abraham Lincoln
“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Laughter can be used to sooth the mind and get rid of those awful thoughts.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
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Abraham Lincoln
