The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here so nobly advanced.
You are green, it is true; but they are green also. You are all green alike.
The trouble with Hooker is that he’s got his headquarters where his hindquarters aught to be.
Sending armies to McClellan is like shoveling fleas across a barnyard, not half of them get there.
I know the hole he went in at, but I can’t tell you what hole he will come out of.
With this honor devolves upon you also a corresponding responsibility. As the country herein trusts you, so under God it will sustain you.
The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.
It is a good face. I am glad this war is over at last.
My Dear McClellan, if you don’t want to use the army I should like to borrow it for a while. Yours respectfully.
If I gave McClellan all the men he asked for, they could not find room to lie down; they’d have to sleep standing up.
His argument is as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by oiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.
If there is a worse place than Hell, I am in it.
No State, upon it own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union. Resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally nothing. I therefore consider that the Union is unbroken. There needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless forced upon the national authority.
I don’t s’pose anybody on earth likes gingerbread better’n I do-and gets less’n I do.
I think that God means that we shall do more than we have yet done in furtherance of his plans and he will open the way for our doing it.
If ever this free people, if this Government itself is ever utterly demoralized, it will come from this incessant human wriggle and struggle for office, which is but a way to live without work.
A man watches his pear-tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap.
Whatever spiteful fools may say, Each jealous ranting yelper, No woman ever went astray, Without a man to help her.
I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true.
The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity.