All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower
wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.
- Abraham Lincoln
The Lord prefers common-looking people.
That is why he makes so many of them.
- Abraham Lincoln
Marriage is neither heaven nor hell,
it is simply purgatory.
- 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
I care not much for a man's religion
whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
- Abraham Lincoln
Hold on with a bulldog grip,
and chew and choke as much as possible.
- 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
When I hear a man preach,
I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
- Abraham Lincoln
It has been my experience that folks who
have no vices, have very few virtues.
- Abraham Lincoln
Every one desires to live long,
but no one would be old.
- 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
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
- Abraham Lincoln
Am I not destroying my enemies
when I make friends of them?
- Abraham Lincoln
Never stir up litigation.
A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.
- Abraham Lincoln
God must love the common man, he made so many of them.
- Abraham Lincoln
Books serve to show a man
that those original thoughts of his
aren't very new at all.
- Abraham Lincoln
The best thing about the future is
that it comes one day at a time.
- Abraham Lincoln
Things may come to those who wait,
but only the things left by those who hustle.
- Abraham Lincoln
These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert,
to fleece the people.
- Abraham Lincoln
Knavery and flattery are blood relations.
- 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
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
- 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
I can make more generals, but horses cost money.
- Abraham Lincoln
No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)
Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln
The philosophy of the school room in one generation
will be the philosophy of government in the next.
- Abraham Lincoln
I have always found that mercy bears
richer fruits than strict justice.
- 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
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
When I do good, I feel good.
When I do bad, I feel bad.
That's my religion.
- Abraham Lincoln
You cannot escape the responsibility
of tomorrow by evading it today.
- Abraham Lincoln
Towering genius disdains a beaten path.
It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
- Abraham Lincoln
Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.
- Abraham Lincoln
I'm a slow walker, but I never walk backward.
- 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
Give me six hours to chop down a tree
and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
- Abraham Lincoln
People are just as happy
as they make up their minds to be.
- Abraham Lincoln
The people will save their government,
if the government itself will allow them.
- 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
Let's have faith that right makes might;
and in that faith let us, to the end,
dare to do our duty as we understand it.
- 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
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
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
That some achieve great success,
is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.
- Abraham Lincoln
I desire so to conduct the affairs
of this administration that, if at the end...
I have lost every other friend on earth,
I shall at least have one friend left,
and that friend shall be down inside of me.
- Abraham Lincoln
Whatever you are, be a good one.
- Abraham Lincoln
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
- 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
What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
- Abraham Lincoln
Everybody likes a compliment.
- Abraham Lincoln
I will prepare and some day my chance will come.
- Abraham Lincoln
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
- 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
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
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
To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets,
but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.
- Abraham Lincoln
The people themselves, and not their servants,
can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.
- Abraham Lincoln
I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.
- 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 best way to destroy an enemy
is to make him a friend.
- Abraham Lincoln
If I had eight hours to chop down a tree,
I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax.
- 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
You cannot build character and courage by
taking away a man's initiative and independence.
- Abraham Lincoln
My great concern is not whether you have failed,
but whether you are content with your failure.
- 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
Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be.
- Abraham Lincoln
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May the world be kind to you,
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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