“The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.”

“Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.”

“Love is the chain whereby to lock a child to its parent.”

“If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him.”

“I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.”

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

“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.”

“A tendancy to melancholy...let it be observed, is a misfortune, not a fault.”

“And in the end it is not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years.”

“No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.”

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

“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.” 

“The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but can not do at all, or can not so well do, for themselves – in their separate, and individual capacities.”

“Military glory--that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood--that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy...”

“Aqueles que negam liberdade aos outros não merecem para si mesmos.”