Am I not destroying my enemies
when I make friends of them?
- Abraham Lincoln
Marriage is neither heaven nor hell,
it is simply purgatory.
- Abraham Lincoln
I care not much for a man's religion
whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
- Abraham Lincoln
The Lord prefers common-looking people.
That is why he makes so many of them.
- Abraham Lincoln
No matter how much cats fight,
there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
- Abraham Lincoln
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea;
but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
- Abraham Lincoln
Books serve to show a man
that those original thoughts of his
aren't very new at all.
- Abraham Lincoln
These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert,
to fleece the people.
- Abraham Lincoln
Every one desires to live long,
but no one would be old.
- Abraham Lincoln
I can make more generals, but horses cost money.
- Abraham Lincoln
When you have got an elephant by the hind legs
and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.
- Abraham Lincoln
Common looking people are the best in the world:
that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.
- Abraham Lincoln
The best thing about the future is
that it comes one day at a time.
- Abraham Lincoln
Discourage litigation.
Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can.
As a peacemaker the lawyer has
superior opportunity of being a good man.
There will still be business enough.
- Abraham Lincoln
Knavery and flattery are blood relations.
- Abraham Lincoln
It has been my experience that folks who
have no vices, have very few virtues.
- Abraham Lincoln
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
- Abraham Lincoln
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
- Abraham Lincoln
Never stir up litigation.
A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.
- Abraham Lincoln
Hold on with a bulldog grip,
and chew and choke as much as possible.
- Abraham Lincoln
When I hear a man preach,
I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
- Abraham Lincoln
How many legs does a dog have
if you call the tail a leg? Four.
Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
- Abraham Lincoln
The way for a young man to rise is
to improve himself in every way he can,
never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.
- Abraham Lincoln
God must love the common man, he made so many of them.
- Abraham Lincoln
Avoid popularity if you would have peace.
- Abraham Lincoln
Things may come to those who wait,
but only the things left by those who hustle.
- Abraham Lincoln
Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln 
No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)
I don't like that man.
I must get to know him better.
- Abraham Lincoln
I have always found that mercy bears
richer fruits than strict justice.
- Abraham Lincoln
The philosophy of the school room in one generation
will be the philosophy of government in the next.
- Abraham Lincoln
In great contests, each party claims to act
in accordance with the will of God.
Both may be, and one must be wrong.
- Abraham Lincoln
With the fearful strain that is on me night and day,
if I did not laugh I should die.
- Abraham Lincoln
The time comes upon every public man
when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.
- Abraham Lincoln
There is nothing true anywhere,
The true is nowhere to be seen;
If you say you see the true,
This seeing is not the true one.
- Abraham Lincoln paraphrasing Lao Tzu' Tao te Ching
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.
The occasion is piled high with difficulty,
and we must rise with the occasion.
As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
- Abraham Lincoln
Give me six hours to chop down a tree
and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
- Abraham Lincoln
I never had a policy;
I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.
- Abraham Lincoln
I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.
- Abraham Lincoln
Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
- Abraham Lincoln
I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.
- Abraham Lincoln
He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.
- Abraham Lincoln
We the people are the rightful masters
of both Congress and the courts,
not to overthrow the Constitution
but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
- Abraham Lincoln
I do the very best I know how -
the very best I can;
and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.
- Abraham Lincoln
I was losing interest in politics,
when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again.
What I have done since then is pretty well known.
- Abraham Lincoln
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital.
Capital is only the fruit of labor,
and could never have existed if labor had not first existed.
Labor is the superior of capital,
and deserves much the higher consideration.
- Abraham Lincoln
You cannot build character and courage by
taking away a man's initiative and independence.
- Abraham Lincoln
Whatever you are, be a good one.
- Abraham Lincoln
And in the end, it's not
the years in your life that count,
it's the life in your years.
- Abraham Lincoln
You cannot escape the responsibility
of tomorrow by evading it today.
- Abraham Lincoln
Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit
which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men,
in all lands, everywhere.
Destroy this spirit and you have planted
the seeds of despotism around your own doors.
- Abraham Lincoln
If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens,
you can never regain their respect and esteem.
- Abraham Lincoln
If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog?
Five? No, calling a tail a leg don't make it a leg.
- Abraham Lincoln
What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
- Abraham Lincoln
We should be too big to take offense
and too noble to give it.
- Abraham Lincoln
I am a firm believer in the people.
If given the truth, they can be depended upon
to meet any national crisis.
The great point is to bring them the real facts.
- Abraham Lincoln
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected?
I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us.
It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot,
we must ourselves be its author and finisher.
As a nation of freemen, we must live
through all time, or die by suicide.
- Abraham Lincoln
If you look for the bad in people
expecting to find it, you surely will.
- Abraham Lincoln
I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward,
and yet not go forward fast enough
to wreck the country's cause.
- Abraham Lincoln
Fourscore 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.
- Abraham Lincoln
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
- Abraham Lincoln
Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.
- Abraham Lincoln
When I am getting ready to reason with a man,
I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself
and what I am going to say
and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.
- Abraham Lincoln
No man is good enough to govern another man
without that other's consent.
- Abraham Lincoln
Government of the people,
by the people,
for the people,
shall not perish from this Earth.
- Abraham Lincoln
These men ask for just the same thing,
fairness, and fairness only.
This, so far as in my power,
they, and all others, shall have.
- Abraham Lincoln
Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation,
whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion,
and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose
to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose -
and you allow him to make war at pleasure.
- Abraham Lincoln
Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition.
Whether it be true or not, I can say for one
that I have no other so great as that
of being truly esteemed of my fellow men,
by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.
- Abraham Lincoln
I want it said of me by those who knew me best,
that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower
where I thought a flower would grow.
- Abraham Lincoln
He who molds the public sentiment...
makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make.
- Abraham Lincoln
If we could first know where we are,
and whither we are tending,
we could then better judge what to do,
and how to do it.
- Abraham Lincoln
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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