If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything.

I am slow to learn and slow to forget that which I have learned. My mind is like a piece of steel, very hard to scratch any thing on it and almost impossible after you get it there to rub it out.

It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.

Freedom is the last, best hope of earth.

Oh, that [his Thanksgiving Message] is some of Seward's nonsense, and it pleases the fools.

The health you enjoy is largely your choice

Again I admonish you not to be turned from your stern purpose of defending your beloved country and its free institutions by any arguments urged by ambitious and designing men, but stand fast to the Union and the old flag.