The complete collection
One of the chief virtues of a democracy, however, is that its defects are always visible and under democratic processes can be pointed out and corrected.
With the first word I used intelligently, I learned to live, to think, to hope.
Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things.
Each halt in his progress has been but a pause before a mighty leap forward.
Man is only what he becomes--profound truth; but he becomes only what he is, truth still more profound.
To reform one's maxims is nothing: it is but to change the title of the book. To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life.
depend upon it, you will love your native hills the better for being separated from them
The evil cannot be cured or remedied by silence as to its existence.
We may hasten or we may retard, but we can not prevent, the final reconciliation.
Let all our people, leaving behind them the battlefields of dead issues, move forward and in their strength of liberty and the restored Union win the grander victories of peace.
Nothing comes unbidden; where the shadow is, there also is the substance.
It is an evil omen of the times that men have undertaken to calculate the mere material value of the Union.
We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts.
To be a recipient of a communication is to have an enlarged and changed experience.
As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but Nature's sources never fail.
The collisions of party spirit which originate in speculative opinions or in different views of administrative policy are in their nature transitory.
The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural.
The result was that I gradually, but completely, emerged from my habitual depression, and was never again subject to it.
But the time came when I awakened from this as from a dream.
At first I hoped that the cloud would pass away of itself; but it did not.
At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down.
For the first time in our history the person elected to the Vice-Presidency of the United States, by the happening of a contingency provided for in the Constitution, has had devolved upon him the Presidential office.
While I silently ponder on that Change wrought in me, I find no Language equal to it, nor any Means to convey to another a clear Idea of it.
Deep-rooted Customs, though wrong, are not easily altered; but it is the Duty of every one to be firm in that which they certainly know is right for them.
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.