Abraham Lincoln Quotes

In the course of my main argument, Judge Douglas interrupted me to say, that the principle the Nebraska bill was very old; that it originated when God made man and placed good and evil before him, allowing him to choose for himself, being responsible for the choice he should make. At the time I thought this was merely playful; and I answered it accordingly. But in his reply to me he renewed it, as a serious argument. In seriousness then, the facts of this proposition are not true as stated. God did not place good and evil before man, telling him to make his choice. On the contrary, he did tell him there was one tree, of the fruit of which, he should not eat, upon pain of certain death.

A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded cannot be safely disregarded.

The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.

Military glory, — that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood.

Don't criticise the; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.

Perhaps a man's character was like a tree, and his reputation like its shadow; the shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

No matter how much the cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.

Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.

If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.

I do not wish you to believe that I assume to be any better than others who have gone before me.

I am the most miserable man living. if what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be a cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better I cannot tell; I awfully forbade I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better.

Hypocrite: The man who murdered his parents, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.

Every blade of grass is a study; and to produce two, where there was but one, is both a profit and a pleasure.

We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places, and by different workmen — Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance — and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly matte the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few, — not omitting even scaffolding — or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in — in such a case we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.

When men take it in their heads today to hang gamblers or burn murderers, they should recollect that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang or burn someone who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of tomorrow may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake. — “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions”: Address before the
Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838