“We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.”

“If I am killed, I can die but once; but to live in constant dread of it, is to die over and over again.”

“A house divided cannot stand.”

“Two principles have stood face-to-face from the beginning of time; and they will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings.”

“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on”

“If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him.”

“IF you are going to fight, don't let them talk you into negotiating. But, if you are going to negotiate, don't let them talk you into fighting.”

“I laugh because I must not cry, that is all, that is all. ”

“Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world...enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space.”

“Don't worry when you are not recognized but strive to be worthy of recognition”

“I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. --February 22, 1861”

“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.” 

“I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.”

“The better part of one's life consists of his friendships.”

“I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back.”