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

“That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence built.”

“I have destroyed my enemies when I make friends with them”

“If I do good, I feel good...If I do bad, I feel bad”

“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.”

“He whose wisdom surpasses that of all philosophers, has declared that 'a house divided against itself cannot stand”

“What is conservatism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?”

“People who have no vices, have very few virtues.”

“What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.”

“You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.”

“If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.”

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

“Lets have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

“Your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other”

“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.”