Abraham Lincoln: “You cannot conciliate the South if you guarantee to them ultimate success.”

Important principles may and must be inflexible.

If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything.

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.

I do the very best I know how--the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end.