“Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition... I have no other so great as that of being truely esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.”

“A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.”

“Education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.”

“The better part of one's life consists of his friendships.”

“Let no feeling of discouragement prey upon you, and in the end you  are sure to succeed.”

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

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

“This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.”

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

“I laugh because I must not cry, that is all, that is all. ”

“If we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class.”

“Important principles may and must be inflexible.”

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

“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.” 

“Believing everyone is dangerous, but believing nobody is more dangerous.”