“Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower when I thought a flower would grow.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“A drop of honey gathers more flies than a gallon of gall”
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Abraham Lincoln
“I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man. (When a skeptic expressed surprise to see him reading a Bible)”
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Abraham Lincoln
“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“No man who is resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry”
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Abraham Lincoln
“My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“If any man at this day sincerely believes that a proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his position by all truthful evidence and fair argument which he can. But he has no right to mislead others, who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live" were of the same opinion - thus substituting falsehood and deception for truthful evidence and fair argument.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”
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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.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“To sin by silence when they should protest, makes cowards of men.”
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Abraham Lincoln
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
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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 semi-colon; it's a useful little chap.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
