This human struggle and scramble for office, for a way to live without work, will finally test the strength of our institutions.

Character is the tree, reputation is the shadow.

Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual meanness for the public good.

You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.

Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly, or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God ... and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.