“I am nothing, truth is everything.”

“I will prepare and some day my chance will come.”

“Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.”

“I will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. It is not the Constitution as I would like to have it, but as it is, that is to be defended. The Constitution will not be preserved & defended until it is enforced & obeyed in every part of every one of the United States. It must be so respected, obeyed, enforced and defended, and let the grass grow where it may.”

“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.” 

“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar”

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

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

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

“With Malice Towards None”

“The hen is the wisest of all the animal creation, because she never cackles until the egg is laid.”

“The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.”

“And this, too, shall pass away.”

“I know of nothing so pleasant to the mind, as the discovery of anything which is at once new and valuable--nothing which so lightens and sweetens toil, as the hopeful pursuit of such discovery.”

“Women are the only people I am afraid of who I never thought would hurt me”