I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.
When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.
Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.
Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that's my religion.
Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.
All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
If I like a thing, it just sticks after once reading it or hearing it.
I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.
To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.
To the best of my judgment, I have labored for, and not against, the Union. As I have not felt, so I have not expressed any harsh sentiment towards our Southern brethren. I have constantly declared, as I really believed, the only difference between them and us is the difference of circumstances.
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.
The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.
With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.
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.
That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.
A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap.
Four score 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.
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.
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced and cultivated. It is the lawyer's avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech.
Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.
If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.
The legal right of the Southern people to reclaim their fugitives I have constantly admitted. The legal right of Congress to interfere with their institution in the states, I have constantly denied.
When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.
Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.
I hold that while man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind.
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.
Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.
In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.
These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people; and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel.