Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?

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.

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.

That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.

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.

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.

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.

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.

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.

He who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

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.

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.

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.

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

In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and to the young, it comes with bitterest agony because it takes them unawares. I have had experience enough to know what I say.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

For my part, I desire to see the time when education - and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry - shall become much more general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate the happy period.

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.

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.

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

When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that's my religion.

That I am not a member of any Christian church is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures, and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular.

I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion.

If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.

I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow.

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

The assertion that 'all men are created equal' was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.

With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.

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.

If the great American people will only keep their temper, on both sides of the line, the troubles will come to an end, and the question which now distracts the country will be settled just as surely as all other difficulties of like character which have originated in this government have been adjusted.

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.

Let the people on both sides keep their self-possession, and just as other clouds have cleared away in due time, so will this, and this great nation shall continue to prosper as before.

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

No man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent.

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

In my view of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say in advance, there will be no blood shed unless it be forced upon the government. The government will not use force unless force is used against it.

We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.

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.

I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government, who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).

That our government should have been maintained in its original form from its establishment until now is not much to be wondered at. It had many props to support it through that period, which now are decayed and crumbled away. Through that period, it was felt by all to be an undecided experiment; now, it is understood to be a successful one.

In so far as the government lands can be disposed of, I am in favor of cutting up the wild lands into parcels so that every poor man may have a home.

Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

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

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.