“What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.”

“A tendancy to melancholy...let it be observed, is a misfortune, not a fault.”

“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.” 

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

“You cannot have the right to do what is wrong!”

“Don’t criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.”

“No man who is resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention.”

“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.”

“There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.”

“They [the signers of the Declaration of Independence] did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right; so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.”

“Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.”

“Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward.”

“Tis better people think you a fool, then open your mouth and erase all doubt.”

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

“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”