All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.
All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.
I have got you together to hear what I have written down. I do not wish your advice about the main matter for that I have determined for myself. Attributed to President Abraham Lincoln. Salmon P. Chase, diary entry for September 22, 1862, Diary and Correspondence of Salmon P Chase, p. 88 (1903, reprinted 1971). According to the Chase account, Lincoln spoke these words at a cabinet meeting he had called to inform the members of his decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. This quotation is also used in Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln The War Years, p. 584 (1939). Although these words are not used, the same thought is conveyed in the diary of another member of Lincoln's cabinet, Gideon Welles. See his diary entry for the same date in Diary of Gideon Welles, vol. 1, pp. 142-43 (1911).
© 2020 Inspirational Stories
© 2020 Inspirational Stories