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
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea;
but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
- 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
Marriage is neither heaven nor hell,
it is simply purgatory.
- Abraham Lincoln
It has been my experience that folks who
have no vices, have very few virtues.
- Abraham Lincoln
These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert,
to fleece the people.
- 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
Things may come to those who wait,
but only the things left by those who hustle.
- Abraham Lincoln
Avoid popularity if you would have peace.
- 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
The best thing about the future is
that it comes one day at a time.
- Abraham Lincoln
When I hear a man preach,
I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
- Abraham Lincoln
Common looking people are the best in the world:
that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.
- Abraham Lincoln
Every one desires to live long,
but no one would be old.
- Abraham Lincoln
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
- 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
Hold on with a bulldog grip,
and chew and choke as much as possible.
- 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
Am I not destroying my enemies
when I make friends of them?
- 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
I can make more generals, but horses cost money.
- Abraham Lincoln
Books serve to show a man
that those original thoughts of his
aren't very new at all.
- Abraham Lincoln
God must love the common man, he made so many of them.
- 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 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
I don't like that man.
I must get to know him better.
- Abraham Lincoln
Die when I may, I want it said 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
The time comes upon every public man
when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.
- Abraham Lincoln
Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
- Abraham Lincoln
Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be.
- Abraham Lincoln
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.
- Abraham Lincoln
If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens,
you can never regain their respect and esteem.
- Abraham Lincoln
I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true.
I am not bound to succeed,
but I am bound to live by the light that I have.
I must stand with anybody that stands right,
and stand with him while he is right,
and part with him when he goes wrong.
- Abraham Lincoln
The best way to get a bad law repealed
is to enforce it strictly.
- Abraham Lincoln
Public sentiment is everything.
With public sentiment, nothing can fail.
Without it, nothing can succeed.
- Abraham Lincoln
You can fool all the people some of the time,
and some of the people all the time,
but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
- Abraham Lincoln (sometimes attributed to P. T. Barnum)
A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.
- Abraham Lincoln
I don't know who my grandfather was;
I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
- Abraham Lincoln
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
I never had a policy;
I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.
- 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
My great concern is not whether you have failed,
but whether you are content with your failure.
- Abraham Lincoln
Towering genius disdains a beaten path.
It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
- Abraham Lincoln
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power,
have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government,
and form a new one that suits them better.
This is a most valuable - a most sacred right -
a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
- 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
The best way to destroy an enemy
is to make him a friend.
- Abraham Lincoln
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;
and precisely the same difference
prevails today among us human creatures
- Abraham Lincoln
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed
is more important than any other one thing.
- Abraham Lincoln
Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow.
The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
- Abraham Lincoln
He who molds the public sentiment...
makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make.
- Abraham Lincoln
Give me six hours to chop down a tree
and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
- 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
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
Don't worry when you are not recognized,
but strive to be worthy of recognition.
- Abraham Lincoln
With the fearful strain that is on me night and day,
if I did not laugh I should die.
- Abraham Lincoln
The assertion that "all men are created equal"
was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain
and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.
- Abraham Lincoln
When I do good, I feel good.
When I do bad, I feel bad.
That's my religion.
- Abraham Lincoln
Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.
- Abraham Lincoln
The people will save their government,
if the government itself will allow them.
- 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
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
Government of the people,
by the people,
for the people,
shall not perish from this Earth.
- Abraham Lincoln
If you look for the bad in people
expecting to find it, you surely will.
- 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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