Comparison with something that is better is the thief of joy. Comparison with something that is worse is a joy - full of relief and gratitude! You cannot always choose what happens to you or your circumstances but you can always choose your attitude by what you choose to compare your experiences or circumstances to and therefore how you will feel!! We can make any experience either a heaven or a hell by what we compare it to. Our emotions are 'an inside job!'
I would rather go out of politics having the feeling that I had done what was right than stay in with the approval of all men, knowing in my heart that I have acted as I ought not to.
The forces that tend for evil are great and terrible, but the forces of truth and love and courage and honesty and generosity and sympathy are also stronger than ever before.
Abraham Lincoln - the spirit incarnate of those who won victory in the Civil War - was the true representative of this people, not only for his own generation, but for all time, because he was a man among men.
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
Over-sentimentality, over-softness, in fact washiness and mushiness are the great dangers of this age and of this people. Unless we keep the barbarian virtues, gaining the civilized ones will be of little avail.
Wild beasts and birds are by right not the property merely of the people today, but the property of the unborn generations, whose belongings we have no right to squander.
To sit home, read one's favorite paper, and scoff at the misdeeds of the men who do things is easy, but it is markedly ineffective. It is what evil men count upon the good men's doing.
The death-knell of the republic had rung as soon as the active power became lodged in the hands of those who sought, not to do justice to all citizens, rich and poor alike, but to stand for one special class and for its interests as opposed to the interests of others.