“All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“A farce or comedy is best played; a tragedy is best read at home.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“Resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name, liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names, liberty and tyranny. The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“if you want your name to be remembered after your death either do something worth writing or write some thing worth reading”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“It's not me who can't keep a secret. It's the people I tell that can't.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power. … But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. (“A National Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer.” Proclamation March 30, 1863)”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man. All the good from The Savior of the world is communicated to us through this Book.”
―
Abraham Lincoln
“To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.”
―
Abraham Lincoln