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
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
No matter how much cats fight,
there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
- 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
Avoid popularity if you would have peace.
- Abraham Lincoln
Books serve to show a man
that those original thoughts of his
aren't very new at all.
- Abraham Lincoln
Common looking people are the best in the world:
that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.
- Abraham Lincoln
When I hear a man preach,
I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
- Abraham Lincoln
Knavery and flattery are blood relations.
- Abraham Lincoln
Every one desires to live long,
but no one would be old.
- Abraham Lincoln
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
- Abraham Lincoln
Hold on with a bulldog grip,
and chew and choke as much as possible.
- Abraham Lincoln
God must love the common man, he made so many of them.
- Abraham Lincoln
The best thing about the future is
that it comes one day at a time.
- Abraham Lincoln
Never stir up litigation.
A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.
- 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
I can make more generals, but horses cost money.
- Abraham Lincoln
Am I not destroying my enemies
when I make friends of them?
- Abraham Lincoln
Things may come to those who wait,
but only the things left by those who hustle.
- 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
It has been my experience that folks who
have no vices, have very few virtues.
- 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
These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert,
to fleece the people.
- Abraham Lincoln
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
- 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)
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
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
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 ballot is stronger than the bullet.
- Abraham Lincoln
A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.
- Abraham Lincoln
To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets,
but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.
- Abraham Lincoln
I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.
- Abraham Lincoln
Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.
- 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
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
What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
- Abraham Lincoln
Public sentiment is everything.
With public sentiment, nothing can fail.
Without it, nothing can succeed.
- Abraham Lincoln
Some single mind must be master,
else there will be no agreement in anything.
- 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 people will save their government,
if the government itself will allow them.
- Abraham Lincoln
Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
- Abraham Lincoln
Those who deny freedom to others
deserve it not for themselves.
- Abraham Lincoln
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
- Abraham Lincoln
I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me.
They have clung to me all my life.
- Abraham Lincoln
My great concern is not whether you have failed,
but whether you are content with your failure.
- 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
America will never be destroyed from the outside.
If we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
- Abraham Lincoln
If I had eight hours to chop down a tree,
I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax.
- Abraham Lincoln
The best way to get a bad law repealed
is to enforce it strictly.
- 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
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
And in the end, it's not
the years in your life that count,
it's the life in your years.
- 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
Stand with anybody that stands right,
stand with him while he is right
and part with him when he goes wrong.
- Abraham Lincoln
If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens,
you can never regain their respect and esteem.
- 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
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
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 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
No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
- Abraham Lincoln
I'm a slow walker, but I never walk backward.
- 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
People are just as happy
as they make up their minds to be.
- 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
No man is good enough to govern another man
without that other's consent.
- 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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