I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better, it appears to me.

I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any Abolitionist.

We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein.

No man is poor who has a Godly mother.

I sincerely wish war was a pleasanter and easier business than it is, but it does not admit of holidays.

Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for SOME men to enslave OTHERS is a "sacred right of self-government." These principles can not stand together. They are as opposite as God and mammon; and whoever holds to the one, must despise the other.

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.