Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
99+ Best Abraham Lincoln Quotes & Wishes
Abraham Lincoln Quotes quotes gather warm, thoughtful lines for readers looking for the right words. Copy a favourite or download it as a free image card to share with someone today.
Updated: October 2026
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The southern people are just what we would be in their situation.
I am rather inclined to silence.
When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it is best to let him run.
I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I hope peace will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time.
Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?
With the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.
If there is a worse place than hell, I am in it.
Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.
I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.
War, at the best, is terrible; and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible.
I can't spare this man — he fights.
It is not best to swap horses when crossing a stream.
As a peacemaker, the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man.
Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.
Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can.
Resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer.
I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people?
They intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects.
Our progress in degeneracy appears to be pretty rapid.
If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.
When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion — kind, unassuming persuasion — should ever be adopted in preference to force.
Bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible; still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed.
Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed.
Gold is good in its place; but loving, brave, patriotic men are better than gold.
There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.
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.
When I am dead, I hope it may be said: his ambition was sincere and his performance useful.
Avoid popularity if you would have peace.
I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration, that if at the end I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.
Among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet.
Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.
We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.
The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.
Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?
Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.
The struggle of today is not altogether for today — it is for a vast future also.
I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I did not believe to be honest.
If elected I shall be thankful; if not it will be all the same.
I am disposed often to be of service to anyone who may want it.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
We are met on a great battle-field of that war.
I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.
Fellow-countrymen: we cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground.
If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it.
What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.
Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.
No State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union.
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union.
I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual.
The Union is much older than the Constitution.
Without the assistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail.