“If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it.”

“you can't escape tomorrow's responsibilities by evading it today”

“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.”

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

“Every man's happiness is his own responsibility.”

“Love is the chain whereby to lock a child to its parent.”

“You can’t make a weak man strong by making a strong man weak”

“Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.”

“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.” 

“A nation that does not honor its heroes will not long endure.”

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

“If frienship is your weakest point then you are the strongest person in the world.”

“If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.”

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

“in times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity.”