Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.

Sir, 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.

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

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.

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 this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.

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.

The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.

In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.

And having thus chosen our course, without guile, and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear, and with manly hearts.

When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

That we we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

Lets have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

I think that slavery is wrong, morally, socially and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union.

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.

What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.

It is with your aid, as the people, that I think we shall be able to preserve – not the country, for the country will preserve itself, but the institutions of the country – those institutions which have made us free, intelligent and happy – the most free, the most intelligent, and the happiest people on the globe.

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.

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.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God … and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.

It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.

Sir, 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.

These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.

If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.

I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.

Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty.

How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn’t make it a leg.

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.