My great concern is not whether you have failed,
but whether you are content with your failure.
- 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
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea;
but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
- 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
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
When I hear a man preach,
I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
- 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
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
Common looking people are the best in the world:
that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.
- Abraham Lincoln
Knavery and flattery are blood relations.
- Abraham Lincoln
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
- Abraham Lincoln
God must love the common man, he made so many of them.
- Abraham Lincoln
It has been my experience that folks who
have no vices, have very few virtues.
- Abraham Lincoln
Books serve to show a man
that those original thoughts of his
aren't very new at all.
- Abraham Lincoln
I can make more generals, but horses cost money.
- Abraham Lincoln
Things may come to those who wait,
but only the things left by those who hustle.
- Abraham Lincoln
Am I not destroying my enemies
when I make friends of them?
- 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
Avoid popularity if you would have peace.
- Abraham Lincoln
Every one desires to live long,
but no one would be old.
- 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
The best thing about the future is
that it comes one day at a time.
- Abraham Lincoln
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
- Abraham Lincoln
These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert,
to fleece the people.
- 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)
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
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
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
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
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
With Malice toward none, with charity for all,
with firmness in the right,
as God gives us to see the right,
let us strive on to finish the work we are in,
to bind up the nation's wounds.
- 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
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
As I would not be a slave,
so I would not be a master.
This expresses my idea of democracy.
- Abraham Lincoln
Give me six hours to chop down a tree
and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
- Abraham Lincoln
We should be too big to take offense
and too noble to give it.
- 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
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens,
you can never regain their respect and esteem.
It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time;
you can even fool some of the people all of the time;
but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
- Abraham Lincoln
I will prepare and some day my chance will come.
- Abraham Lincoln
I never had a policy;
I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.
- Abraham Lincoln
I don't know who my grandfather was;
I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
- Abraham Lincoln
No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
- 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
Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be.
- Abraham Lincoln
No man is good enough to govern another man
without that other's consent.
- Abraham Lincoln
I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.
- Abraham Lincoln
Towering genius disdains a beaten path.
It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
- Abraham Lincoln
If you look for the bad in people
expecting to find it, you surely will.
- 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
Some single mind must be master,
else there will be no agreement in anything.
- Abraham Lincoln
When I do good, I feel good.
When I do bad, I feel bad.
That's my religion.
- Abraham Lincoln
Those who deny freedom to others
deserve it not for themselves.
- 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
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
- Abraham Lincoln
Whatever you are, be a good one.
- Abraham Lincoln
Don't worry when you are not recognized,
but strive to be worthy of recognition.
- 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
Government of the people,
by the people,
for the people,
shall not perish from this Earth.
- Abraham Lincoln
Public sentiment is everything.
With public sentiment, nothing can fail.
Without it, nothing can succeed.
- 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
A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.
- Abraham Lincoln
Stand with anybody that stands right,
stand with him while he is right
and part with him when he goes wrong.
- Abraham Lincoln
Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution.
That must be maintained, for it is
the only safeguard of our liberties.
- Abraham Lincoln
Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.
- 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
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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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