People are just as happy as they choose to be.

Our eldest boy, Bob, has been away from us nearly a year at school, and will enter Harvard University this month. He promises verywell, considering we never controlled him much.

Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me is a matter of profound wonder.

[T]he man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.

You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.

Committee: A group which succeeds in getting something done only when it consists of three members, one of whom happens to be sick and another absent.