“If we magnified our successes as much as we magnify our disappointments, we'd all be much happier”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire for themselves, and secondly those who desire it for others. Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”
―
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.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“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.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power. … But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. (“A National Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer.” Proclamation March 30, 1863)”
―
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
“The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“If you think you can you can, if you think you can't you're right!”
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Abraham Lincoln
“With educated people, I suppose, punctuation is a matter of rule; with me it is a matter of feeling. But I must say I have a great respect for the semicolin; it's a useful little chap”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I am growing old enough not to care much for the MANNER of doing things.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“What is conservatism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?”
―
Abraham Lincoln
