"If frienship is your weakest point then you are the strongest person in the world."

"Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all."

"I laugh because I must not cry, that is all, that is all."

"If they do kill me I shall never die another death."

"When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees."

"The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly."

"The more sects we have the better. They are all getting somebody in (to the Church) that the others could not: and even with the numerous divisions we are all doing tolerably well."

"Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth."

"Writing is the great invention of the world."

"Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced and cultivated. It is the lawyer's avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech."

"I sincerely wish war was a pleasanter and easier business than it is but it does not admit of holidays."

"Public opinion in this country is everything."

"God must have loved the plain people: He made so many of them."

"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew."

"My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure."

"In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."

"I have come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason, I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me."

"I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it."

"The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him."

"We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution."

"Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong."

"All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."

"I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for the day."

"My dear Sir.Yours of the 13th. is just received. My engagements are such that I can not, at any very early day, visit Rock-Island, to deliver a lecture, or for any other object.As to the other matter you kindly mention, I must, in candor, say I do not think myself fit for the Presidency. I certainly am flattered, and gratified, that some partial friends think of me in that connection; but I really think it best for our cause that no concerted effort, such as you suggest, should be made.Let this be considered confidential."

"There are no bad pictures, that's just how your face looks sometimes."

"If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee."

"It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence."

"A house divided against itself cannot stand - I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free."

"I will prepare and some day my chance will come."

"Get books, sit yourself down anywhere, and go to reading them yourself."

"No matter how much the cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens."

"The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all or cannot so well do for themselves in their separate and individual capacities."

"Our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the Negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, sneered at, construed, hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it."

"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."

"Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties."

"My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read."

"The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions."

"I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end... I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me."

"Public opinion though often formed upon a wrong basis yet generally has a strong underlying sense of justice."

"If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign we intend the Union shall go on."

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

"You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence."

"In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once."

"All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."

"Some day I shall be President."

"That some should be rich shows that others may become rich and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise."

"You can have anything you want if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose."

"Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy and contented; and there is nothing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort."

"I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, you begin making exceptions to it, where will you stop? If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?"