The person who is incapable of making a mistake, is incapable of anything.

It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity.

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

I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back.

Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.

no man who is resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention, still less can he afford to take the consequences, including the vitiation of his temper and the loss of self control, yield to larger things to which you show no more than equal rights, and yield to lesser ones though clearly your own, better give your path to a dog, than be bitten by him in contesting for the right, not even killing the dog, will cure the bite

I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.