Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Friendship (18 Quotes)

When someone asked Abraham Lincoln, after he was elected president, what he was going to do about his enemies, he replied, 'I am going to destroy them. I am going to make them my friends.'

The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end... I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.

Lonely men seek companionship. Lonely women sit at home and wait. They never meet.

If you wish to win a man over to your ideas, first make him your friend.

Friends, I agree with you in Providence but I believe in the Providence of the most men, the largest purse, and the longest cannon.

I destroy my enemy when I make him my friend.

I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.

I am a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down...

When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and true maxim that 'a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.' So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and which, once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing him of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause is really a good one.

Do not worry eat three square meals a day say your prayers be courteous to your creditors keep your digestion good exercise go slow and easy. Maybe there are other things your special case requires to make you happy but, my friend, these I rec

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 grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.

I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer who remarked to a companion once that 'it was not best to swap horses while crossing streams.'

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make them my friends.

If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what you will, is the great high-road to his reason. . .

An old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that it was not best to swap horses in mid-stream.

A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.