Abraham Lincoln

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

I think very much of the people, as an old friend said he thought of woman. He said when he lost his first wife, who had been a great help to him in his business, he thought he was ruined - that he could never find another to fill her place. At length, however, he married another, who he found did quite as well as the first, and that his opinion now was that any woman would do well who was well done by. So I think of the whole people of this nation - they will ever do well if well done by. We will try to do well by them in all parts of the country, North and South, with entire confidence that all will be well with all of us.

Surely God would not have created such a being as man . . . to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and defend it'.

Gentlemen, suppose all the property you were worth was in gold, and you had put it in the hands of Blondin to carry across the Niagara River on a rope, would you shake the cable, or keep shouting out to him - "Blondin, stand up a little straighter - Blondin, stoop a little more - go a little faster - lean a little more to the north - lean a little more to the south?" No, you would hold your breath as well as your tongue, and keep your hands off until he was safe over. The Government are carrying an immense weight. Untold treasures are in their hands. They are doing the very best they can. Don't badger them. Keep silence, and we'll get you safe across. -Francis B. Carpenter, "Anecdotes and Reminiscences of President Lincoln" in Henry Jarvis Raymond, The Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln..., p. 752 (1865). Carpenter, a portrait artist, lived in the White House for six months beginning February 1864, to paint the president and the entire Cabinet. His relations with the president became of an "intimate character," and he was permitted "the freedom of his private office at almost all hours,...privileged to see and know more of his daily life" than most people. He states that he "endeavored to embrace only those [anecdotes] which bear the marks of authenticity. Many....I myself heard the President relate; others were communicated to me by persons who either heard or took part in them" (p. 725). Blondin (real name Jean Francois Gravelet) was a French tightrope walker who crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope in 1855, 1859, and 1860.

. . . I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

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

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

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

What has once happened, will invariably happen again, when the same circumstances which combined to produce it, shall again combine in the same way.