Your theory of partial immortality is abhorrent to me. I would rather disbelieve in the immortality of my own soul than suppose the boon given to me was withheld from any of my fellow creatures.

[On John Brown:] The poor wretch is hanged, but from his grave a root of bitterness will spring, the fruit of which at no distant day may be disunion and civil war.

... it's always determined characters who make the greatest fools.

Place, time, life, death, earth, heaven are divisions and distinctions we make, like the imaginary lines we trace upon the surface of the globe.

In the north we could not hope to keep the worst and poorest servant for a single day in the wretched discomfort in which our negro servants are forced habitually to live.

Carols of gladness ring from every tree.

I want to do everything in the world that can be done.