So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished.

I have been up to see the Congress and they do not seem to be able to do anything except to eat peanuts and chew tobacco, while my army is starving.

There is nothing left for me to do but to go and see General Grant and I would rather die a thousand deaths.

My experiences of men has neither disposed me to think worse of them nor be indisposed to serve them: nor, in spite of failures which I lament, of errors which I now see and acknowledge, or the present aspect of affairs, do I despair of the future. The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.

What a glorious world Almighty God has given us. How thankless and ungrateful we are, and how we labor to mar his gifts.

What a beautiful world God, in His loving kindness to His creatures, has given us! What a shame that men endowed with reason and knowledge of right should mar His gifts.

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.