To Be Memorized.
Reading edition
Mr. Lincoln wrote many passages worthy of being committed to memory. His phrase "Government of the people, for the people and by the people," is more quoted than any other on the question of government. I add a few that are well worthy of memorizing and remark, that every boy and girl in America ought to be able to recite the Gettysburg speech.
"Let us have faith that right makes might and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it."
"With malice toward none and charity to all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in."
"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot permanently endure half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all the one thing or the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it further until it becomes alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South."
"We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot's grave to every loving heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
"We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth."
"In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free."
"'The Father of Waters' again goes unvexed to the sea."
"Among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet."
"And then there will be some black men who can remember that with silent tongue, and clinched teeth and steady eye and well-poised bayonet they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while I fear there will be some white ones unable to forget that with malignant heart and deceitful speech they strove to hinder it."