"Sometimes I need what only you can provide -- your absence."

"By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely overwhelm me."

"If I had more skill in what I'm attempting, I wouldn't need so much courage"

"Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good."

"Try to relax and enjoy the crisis."

"Take Courage! Whatever you decide to do, it will probably be the wrong thing."

"I want either less corruption, or more chance to participate in it."

"What good is it if I talk in flowers while you're thinking in pastry?"

"The assertion that 'all men are created equal' was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use."

"In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in that we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth."

"In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong."

"I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known."

"These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have."

"Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored."

"He who molds the public sentiment... makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make."

"With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed."

"The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person."

"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."

"My computer must be broken: whenever I ask a wrong question, it gives a wrong answer"

"All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power."

"Life is the only game in which the object of the game is to learn the rules"

"A good friend is worth pursuing... but why would a good friend be running away?"

"Good ideas are common - what's uncommon are people who'll work hard enough to bring them about"

"There may not be a Heaven, but there is a San Francisco"

"Keep some souvenirs of your past, or how will you ever prove it wasn't all a dream?"

"With all deference to Chairman Mao and other authors whose quotations derive from longer works, it seemed that I was becoming the world's first writer of self-contained ready-made quotations"

"It's good to know that if I behave strangely enough, society will take full responsibility for me."

"I don't understand you. You don't understand me. What else do we have in common?"

"What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself."

"Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets."

"If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it."

"I believe it is universally understood and acknowledged that all men will ever act correctly, unless they have a motive to do otherwise."

"I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it."

"I am like a man so busy in letting rooms in one end of his house, that he can't stop to put out the fire that is burning the other."

"I am rather inclined to silence."

"Let the people on both sides keep their self-possession, and just as other clouds have cleared away in due time, so will this, and this great nation shall continue to prosper as before."

"There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, 'Truth is the daughter of Time.'"

"We can succeed only by concert. It is not, 'Can any of us imagine better,' but, 'Can we all do better?'"

"To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and whatever you hit call it the target."

"My play was a complete success. The audience was a failure."

"Sometimes the most urgent thing you can possibly do is take a complete rest"

"The most exciting place to discover talent is in yourself"

"Maybe I'm lucky to be going so slowly, because I may be going in the wrong direction."

"When you plan a journey from your mind into mine, remember to allow for the time difference"

"Please don't lie to me, unless you're absolutely sure I'll never find out the truth."

"The closest you will ever come in this life to an orderly universe is a good library"

"Be kind to unkind people - they need it the most"

"I waited and waited, and when no message came, I knew it must be from you."

"Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right."

"I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life."