“Nothing will divert me from my purpose.”

“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.” 

“Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing.”

“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

“Life is hard but so very beautiful”

“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.”

“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.

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

“The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next.”

“I am very little inclined on any occasion to say anything unless I hope to produce some good by it.”

“Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot take by and election, neither can they take by war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.”

“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.”

“The struggle of today, is not altogether for today - it is for a vast future also.”

“Important principles may and must be inflexible.”

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