“Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I know not how to aid you, save in the assurance of one of mature age, and much severe experience, that you can not fail, if you resolutely determine, that you will not.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“They [the signers of the Declaration of Independence] did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right; so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“A farce or comedy is best played; a tragedy is best read at home.”
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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 way for a young man to rise is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him. Allow me to assure you that suspicion and jealousy never did help any man in any situation. There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury. Cast about and see if this feeling has not injured every person you have ever known to fall into it.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“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.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for, and against the same thing at the same time.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“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. ”
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Abraham Lincoln
“The best thing a man can do for his children is love their mother.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I fear you do not fully comprehend the danger of abridging the liberties of the people. Nothing but the very sternest necessity can ever justify it. A government had better go to the very extreme of toleration, than to do aught that could be construed into an interference with, or to jeopardize in any degree, the common rights of its citizens.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“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 this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
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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
