“A tendancy to melancholy...let it be observed, is a misfortune, not a fault.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“God must have loved the plain people; He made so many of them.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“It is not in our forming battlements or bristling seacoasts, or our Army and Navy that makes America great - but rather our reliance in the law of liberty and the religious law God has planted in us.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.
Dear Madam,--
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“The better part of one's life consists of his friendships.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“If any man at this day sincerely believes that a proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his position by all truthful evidence and fair argument which he can. But he has no right to mislead others, who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live" were of the same opinion - thus substituting falsehood and deception for truthful evidence and fair argument.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Without the assistance of that divine being, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, remain with you and be everywhere for good let us confidently hope that all will yet be well.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“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.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
