“You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Without the assistance of that divine being, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, remain with you and be everywhere for good let us confidently hope that all will yet be well.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it." I am loath to close. 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, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“You can complain because a rose has thorns, or you can rejoice
Because the thorns have a rose.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“The facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall be any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the facts, and the inferences and observations following that presentation.
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Towering genius distains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“A tendancy to melancholy...let it be observed, is a misfortune, not a fault.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Tact: the ability to describe others as they see themselves.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“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.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
