“I am not concerned that you have fallen -- I am concerned that you arise.”

“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.” 

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

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

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

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

“If my father's son can become President of these United States, then your father's son can become anything he wishes.”

“It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.”

“As our case is new, we must think and act anew.”

“I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.”

“Let me not be understood as saying that there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed.”

“I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.”

“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.”

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

“If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.”