“God must have loved the plain people; He made so many of them.”

“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”

“To ease another’s heartache is to forget one’s own.”

“My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it.”

“Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction ... nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

“Let [the Constitution] be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges, let it be written in primers, in spelling books and in almanacs, let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation.”

“To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.”

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God cannot retain it.”

“He whose wisdom surpasses that of all philosophers, has declared that 'a house divided against itself cannot stand”

“I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.”

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

“Lets have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

“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.” 

“Truth is generally the best vindication against slander”