Authors — Quotes

Abraham Lincoln Quotes: 56

Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.
All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.
Whatever you are, be a good one.
I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause.
In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in that we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.
Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.
My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.
And in the end it is not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.
I'm a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down.
The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.
We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
Those who look for the bad in people will surely find it.
I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.
I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.
No man is poor who has a Godly mother.
I laugh because I must not cry, that is all, that is all.
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. -Speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854.
The best way to predict your future is to create it
All I have learned, I learned from books.
The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is why he made so many of them.
In this sad world of ours sorrow comes to all and it often comes with bitter agony. Perfect relief is not possible except with time. You cannot now believe that you will ever feel better. But this is not true. You are sure to be happy again. Knowing this, truly believing it will make you less miserable now. I have had enough experience to make this statement.
It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.
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.
The Gettysburg Address
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter usfrom the support of a cause we believe to be just.
Achievement has no color
The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.
Speeches and Writings, 1832-1858
I have come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason, I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.
Get books, sit yourself down anywhere, and go to reading them yourself.
If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it.
Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man. (When a skeptic expressed surprise to see him reading a Bible)
Let no feeling of discouragement preyupon you, and in the end you are sure to succeed.
You can have anything you want if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.
Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.
A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones.
in times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity.
The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next.
Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.
In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for, and against the same thing at the same time.
Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world...enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space.
Speeches And Letters Of Abraham Lincoln, 1832 1865
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.--as quoted in THE RIVER OF WINGED DREAMS
A house divided cannot stand.