Abraham Lincoln Quotes

He might not take their advice, but he took their temperature.

Lincoln was a master of small group theatrics.

Jonathan had been around Washington long enough to know that no offer was exactly what it seemed.

I hope to stand firm enough not to go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause.

To use the past, he had to save it from aspects of itself.

Lincoln told a family friend that his father taught him to work, but never learned him to love it.

Literature offered a safe circumscribed outlet for sadness.

I am growing old enough not to care much for the MANNER of doing things.

To believe in the things you can see and touch is no belief at all - but to believe in the unseen is a triumph and a blessing.

God produced great writing, a matter of first importance to a man like Lincoln, ever impressed with the nature of cause and forces.

She became at once more intimate and more exalted.

What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.[Lincoln's maxim and philosophy]

Lincoln had entirely outgrown juvenile delight in religious argument. Talking with God seemed to the mature Lincoln more important than talking about Him.

He (Lincoln) recognized the delicate balance between immanence and transcendence, refusing to settle for either of these alone. His was a God who was both in the world and above the world.

He (Lincoln) was accustomed to hearing words, many of them boring, but he was not accustomed to group silence.

I was a little cross.I ask pardon. If I do get up a little temper I have no sufficient time to keep it up.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him.

Lincoln matured best in sorrow.

Achievement has no COLOR.

So many people of liberal persuasion value their own progressive opinions more than they value the people they hold those opinions about.

One-time rival and subsequent usurper Secretary of State Seward finally settled into an assessment of Lincoln that, "His confidence and compassion increase every day.

Lincoln bore down or anything he handled, mastering both the details and the principles.

The struggle of today, is not altogether for today - it is for a vast future also.

My greatest concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are concerned with your failure.

The Biblical language was so deeply embedded in the great man's mind that it became his normal way of speaking.

One of the highest marks of citizenship is fighting for the common defense.

Any man's life can be seen as a series of engagements with his fathers, Including the surrogates provided by life and literature.

He seemed to believe that indignation was a sufficient guardian.

Lincoln admitted his infirmities to make way for his spring.

But for this book we could not know right from wrong.

Take all of this Book upon reason that you can, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man.

Upon being given a Bible, President Abraham Lincoln replied, "In regard to this Great book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man.

Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing.

You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.

He was vain and tended to surround himself with intellectual and moral pygmies.

He was the sort of man who only wanted to be told what he already assumed was true.

Deeply convinced of the reality of the divine will, he (Lincoln) had no patience at all with any who were perfectly sure they knew the details of the divine will.

A major element in Lincoln's greatness was the way in which he could hold a strong moral position without the usual accompaniment of self-righteousness.

Our sense of history has grown dangerously thin, and our sense of proportion with it.

As with almost every long oration, there were loose ends.

Jefferson could strike up the band even when he was being lazy or fearful.

Coming from a business family, she shied away from abstractions.

She had been carried away by the need to defend herself.

People seem to remember the sacrifices they made more than what the sacrifices were for.

The victors always think they are righteous. But then, they always seem to start a mighty unrighteous squabbling over the spoils.

It was as simple as walking and as hard as walking on with so far gone and so far yet to go.

Abraham, " he said. "I'm pleased to see you alive, old friend.""And I to see you dead.

It is not in our forming battlements or bristling seacoasts, or our Army and Navy that makes America great - but rather our reliance in the law of liberty and the religious law God has planted in us.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth