“A farce or comedy is best played; a tragedy is best read at home.”

“I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him. ”

“A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”

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

“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.” 

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”

“A half effort is a wasted effort.”

“You can complain because a rose has thorns, or you can rejoice Because the thorns have a rose.”

“you can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors”

“To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.”

“And in the end it is not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Gentlemen, why do you not laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me day and night, if I did not laugh, I should die. ”