Work for your own soul's sake.

To put meaning in one's life may end in madness, But life without meaning is the torture Of restlessness and vague desire-It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

The tongue may be an unruly member-- But silence poisons the soul.

The spiritual kinship between Lincoln and Whitman was founded upon their Americanism, their essential Westernism. Whitman had grown up without much formal education; Lincoln had scarcely any education. One had become the notable poet of the day; one the orator of the Gettsyburg Address. It was inevitable that Whitman as a poet should turn with a feeling of kinship to Lincoln, and even without any association or contact feel that Lincoln was his.

This is a man with an old face, always old... There was pathos, in his face, and in his eyes. The early weariness; and sometimes tears in his eyes, Which he let slip unconsciously on his cheek, Or brushed away with an unconcerned hand. There were tears for human suffering, or for a glance Into the vast futility of life, Which he had seen from the first, being old When he was born.

Beware of the man who rises to power from one suspender.

Did I follow Truth wherever she led, And stand against the whole world for a cause, And uphold the weak against the strong? If I did I would be remembered among men.