His mind was strong and deep, sincere and honest, patient and enduring: having no vices, and having only negative defects, with many positive virtues. His is a strong, honest, sagacious, manly, noble life. He stands in the foremost ranks of men in all ages—their equal—one of the best types of this Christian civilization.
—W. H. Herndon
There is in the whole history of this Republic not one man, from whom we all—wherever born and whatever our political opinions—can learn more instructive and more inspiring lessons as to what true patriotism is: and there is but one who is fully his peer in this respect. To be pitied is, indeed, the American whose way of feeling and thinking will not allow him to look with infinite patriotic pride upon Abraham Lincoln.
—H. E. VonHolst
Lincoln was the grandest figure of the fiercest civil war.... Wealth could not purchase, power could not awe, this divine, this loving man. He knew no fear except the fear of doing wrong. Hating slavery, pitying the master—seeking to conquer not persons, but prejudices. He was the embodiment of the self-denial, the courage, the hope, and the nobility of the nation. He spoke, not to inflame, not to upbraid, but to convince. He raised his hands, not to strike, but in benediction.
—Robert G. Ingersoll
Lincoln was the humblest of the humble before his conscience, greatest of the great before history.
—Castelar
Abraham Lincoln was the vindication of poverty. He gave glory to the lowly. In the light of his life the cabin became conspicuous; the commonest toil no longer common, and the poor man's hardship a road to honor. It put shame on the prejudice of wealth and birth, and dignity on common manhood. The poor received from him inspiring hope; he taught the humblest youth that there was for him a path to power.
—Luther Laflin Mills