We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.

I could not sleep when I got on the hunt for an idea, until I had caught it. This was a kind of passion with me, and it has stuck with me.

I believe the declaration that ‘all men are created equal’ is the great fundamental principle upon which our free institutions rest.

We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.

He [Stephen Douglas] is blowing out the moral lights around us, when he contends that whoever wants slaves has a right to hold them; that he is penetrating, so far as lies in his power, the human soul, and eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty, when he is in every possible way preparing the public mind, by his vast influence, for making the institution of slavery perpetual and national.

I always [or "often"] walk slowly, but I never walk backwards.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.