“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

“Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition... I have no other so great as that of being truely esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.”

“I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.”

“Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.”

“Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man. (When a skeptic expressed surprise to see him reading a Bible)”

“Four score 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. 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 battlefield 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. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot 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. 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 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.” 

“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

“You cannot have the right to do what is wrong!”

“Let no feeling of discouragement prey upon you, and in the end you  are sure to succeed.”

“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.”

“It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity.”

“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”

“I am growing old enough not to care much for the MANNER of doing things.”

“A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”

“I don't like to hear cut and dried sermons. No—when I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.”