Abe Quotes

“Lincoln found that Shakespeare’s universal appeal lay in his depiction of shared human qualities. Disloyalty, jealousy, revenge, hatred, madness, self-destructiveness, tomfoolery, devotion, faith, depression—they were all there in Shakespeare’s plays, delivered in language so carefully calibrated that they remained under artistic control.”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“In one of the rare moments that he discussed his private beliefs, Lincoln declared he would join a church if he found one whose only requirement was to follow the Golden Rule.”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“The difference becomes clear if we consider Herman Melville’s distinction between a thoughtful response to Shakespeare and that of the mere thrill seeker. Melville contrasted “those mistaken souls, who dream of Shakespeare as a mere man of Richard-the-Third humps, and Macbeth daggers,” with the contemplative reader, who was unconcerned with “blood-besmeared tragedy” for its own sake and attended instead to “those deep far-away things” in the Bard of Avon, “those occasional flashings-forth of the intuitive Truth in him; those short, quick probings at the very axis of reality . . . that make Shakespeare, Shakespeare.”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“Melancholy Shakespearean passages provided him with relief. They offered structured, resonant versions of gloom. They organized sad topics and made them meaningful. Reciting dark writings aloud let him project his depression outward so that it was filtered through the improving lens of poetry. The rhythms and images of verse crystallized his private experience in a manner similar to the way his finest speeches crystallized and uplifted the national experience.”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“When I have a particular case in hand,” he explained, “I . . . love to dig up the question by the roots and hold it up and dry it before the fires of the mind.”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“he allegedly told his host, “If this is coffee, please bring me some tea, but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“It is an empty joy to appear better than you are; but a great blessing to be what you ought to be.”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“the ungirt, the diffuse, the profuse, procumbent, one wide ground juniper, . . . it all runs to leaves, to suckers, to tendrils, to miscellany, . . . formless, has no terrible & no beautiful condensation.”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“Principles”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“One of Brown’s slaveholding hostages at Harpers Ferry, Lewis Washington, a descendant of the nation’s first president,”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“Grant oversaw some enslaved people his wife had inherited. He disliked abolitionism, but he realized that slavery threatened to destroy the Union, which he wanted to save. Once he was in place as an officer in the Northern army, he devoted his energy to preserving the nation. Part of that devotion included an openness to using African American troops.”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“Baboon, ape, gorilla: such epithets were used to describe him by adversaries and even by some allies. The Union general George McClellan, for instance, called him “the original gorilla.”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“The old Pilgrim barks, borne as by a miracle over the angry ocean,”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“In Mary’s view, Trumbull should have given Lincoln his votes, not the other way around. Lincoln was relieved that at least the senatorship had gone to the like-minded Trumbull, whom he congratulated and continued to befriend.”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“He decimated many Democratic arguments but replaced them with virtually nothing. To expose Franklin Pierce’s “ludicrous and laughable” record as a brigadier general in the Mexican War,”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“In this partisan diatribe, Lincoln spent most of his time attacking Stephen Douglas’s arguments on behalf of the Democratic candidate Franklin Pierce while offering little positive support of Winfield Scott or the Whigs. He decimated many Democratic arguments but replaced them with virtually nothing. To expose Franklin Pierce’s “ludicrous and laughable” record as a brigadier general in the Mexican War,”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“He had a wide-ranging knowledge of antislavery activism. He shared the loathing of slavery that was the common denominator among all its varieties, including Garrisonian radicalism, the evangelicalism of the Beechers and Finneys, Transcendentalist individualism, and the political approach of the Liberty and Free Soil Parties. Of the varieties, he strongly preferred the latter,”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“Americans are accustomed to seeing the subversive impact of popular music. Blues, jazz, rock, punk, rap, and so on—popular music has been like the prow of an icebreaker, bursting through the frozen sea of convention.”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“Lincoln managed to both respect religion and parody it,”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“Lincoln once said that his father taught him how to work but not how to enjoy it.”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“Poetry became his favorite genre; he memorized poetic lyrics and recited them often. For him, poetry organized and crystalized experience as no other type of language did.”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“As Lincoln later told a friend, “I don’t like to hear cut-and-dried sermons. No—when I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees!”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“In 1820, Americans spent $ 12 million on liquor, an amount that exceeded the total expenditure of the US government.”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“In Emerson’s words, “A great style of hero draws equally all classes, all the extremes of society, till we say the very dogs believe in him.”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

“Ralph Waldo Emerson noted that genius lies in “being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.”
― David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times