“If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might in a moral point of view justify revolution; certainly would if such right were a vital one. But such is not our case.”

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

“I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.”

“I don't like to hear cut and dried sermons. No—when I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.”

“People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.

“I never tire of reading 

“A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.”

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

“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

“No man is poor who has a Godly mother.”

“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

“If Friendship is your weakest point, you are the strongest person in the world.”

“There can be glory in failure and despair in success.”

“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”