“I am slow to listen to criminations among friends, and never expose their quarrels on either side…allow bygones to be bygones, and look to the present & future only.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“The written word may be man's greatest invention. It allows us to
converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn.”
―
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.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I have seen your dispatch expressing your unwillingness to break your hold where you are. Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke...”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“no man who is resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention, still less can he afford to take the consequences, including the vitiation of his temper and the loss of self control, yield to larger things to which you show no more than equal rights, and yield to lesser ones though clearly your own, better give your path to a dog, than be bitten by him in contesting for the right, not even killing the dog, will cure the bite”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“A drop of honey gathers more flies than a gallon of gall.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“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. I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature, opposition to it in his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism, and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“We shall need all the anti-slavery feeling in the country, and more; you can go home and try to bring the people to your views, and you may say anything you like about me, if that will help... When the hour comes for dealing with slavery, I trust I will be willing to do my duty though it cost my life.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. --February 22, 1861”
―
Abraham Lincoln
