Abraham Lincoln Quotes

646 Sourced Quotes

You may burn my body to ashes, and scatter them to the winds of heaven; you may drag my soul down to the regions of darkness and despair to be tormented forever; but you will never get me to support a measure which I believe to be wrong, although by doing so I may accomplish that which I believe to be right.

Abraham Lincoln
You have more of a feeling of personal resentment than I have. Perhaps, I have too little of it, but I never thought it paid.

Abraham Lincoln
Nor must Uncle Sam's Web-feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broadbay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been, and made their tracks.

Abraham Lincoln
When the hour comes for dealing with slavery, I trust I will be willing to do my duty though it cost my life.

Abraham Lincoln
When you lack interest in the case the job will very likely lack skill and diligence in the performance.

Abraham Lincoln
What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.

Abraham Lincoln
We cannot ask a man what he will do, and if we should, and he should answer us, we should despise him for it. Therefore we must take a man whose opinions are known.

Abraham Lincoln
I cannot speak so confidently about the fighting qualities of the Eastern men, or what are called Yankees - not knowing myself particularly to whom the appellation belongs - but this I do know - if the Southerners think that man for man they are better than our Illinois men, or western men generally, they will discover themselves in a grievous mistake.

Abraham Lincoln
Others have been made fools of by the girls; but, this can never be with truth said of me. I most emphatically, in this instance,made a fool of myself.

Abraham Lincoln
No one has needed favours more than I, and generally, few have been less unwilling to accept them; but in this case, favour to me,would be injustice to the public, and therefore I must beg your pardon for declining it.

Abraham Lincoln
The Presidency, even to the most experienced politicians, is no bed of roses; and [Zachary] Taylor like others, found thorns within it. No human being can fill that station and escape censure.

Abraham Lincoln
It is the man who does not want to express an opinion whose opinion I want.

Abraham Lincoln
The people when rightly and fully trusted will return the trust.

Abraham Lincoln
Thoughtful men must feel that the fate of civilization upon this continent is involved in the issue of our contest. Among the most satisfying proofs of this conviction is the hearty devotion everywhere exhibited by our schools and colleges to the national cause.

Abraham Lincoln
I desire to see the time when education, and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry shall become much more general than at present.

Abraham Lincoln
We know, Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than hired laborers amongst us. How little they know, whereof they speak! There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us. Twenty-five years ago, I was a hired laborer. The hired laborer of yesterday, labors on his own account today; and will hire others to labor for him tomorrow.

Abraham Lincoln
I have got you together to hear what I have written down. I do not wish your advice about the main matterfor that I have determined for myself.

Abraham Lincoln
Towering genius...thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves or enslaving freeman.

Abraham Lincoln
You may have a wen or a cancer upon your person and not be able to cut it out lest you bleed to death; but surely it is no way tocure it, to engraft it and spread it over your whole body.

Abraham Lincoln
You say men ought to be hung for the way they are executing the law; I say the way it is being executed is quite as good as any of its antecedents. It is being executed in the precise way which was intended from the first, else why does no Nebraska man express astonishment or condemnation? Poor Reeder is the only public man who has been silly enough to believe that anything like fairness was ever intended, and he has been bravely undeceived.

Abraham Lincoln
The foregoing history may not be precisely accurate in every particular; but I am sure it is sufficiently so, for all the uses I shall attempt to make of it, and in it, we have before us,
the chief material enabling us to correctly judge whether the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is right or wrong.

Abraham Lincoln
In this troublesome world, we are never quite satisfied. When you were here, I thought you hindered me some in attending to business; but now, having nothing but business---no variety---it has grown exceedingly tasteless to me. I hate to sit down and direct documents, and I hate to stay in this old room by myself.

Abraham Lincoln
You are young, and I am older;
You are hopeful, I am not-
Enjoy life, ere it grow colder-
Pluck the roses ere they rot.

Abraham Lincoln
I am absent altogether too much to be a suitable instructor for a law-student. When a man has reached the age that Mr. Widner has,and has already been doing for himself, my judgment is, that he reads the books for himself without an instructor. That is precisely the way I came to the law.

Abraham Lincoln
And you are entirely free from head-ache? That is good -- good -- considering it is the first spring you have been free from it since we were acquainted. I am afraid you will get so well, and fat, and young, as to be wanting to marry again.

Abraham Lincoln
A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can not do this. They can but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them.

Abraham Lincoln
I could as easily bail out the Potomac River with a teaspoon as attend to all the details of the army.

Abraham Lincoln
Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me is a matter of profound wonder.

Abraham Lincoln
I am for those means which will give the greatest good to the greatest number.

Abraham Lincoln
A man has not the time to spend half his life in quarrels. If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him.

Abraham Lincoln