Mary Todd Lincoln Quotes

Given the amount of unjust suffering and unhappiness in the world, I am deeply grateful for, sometimes even perplexed by, how much misery I have been spared.

It's outrageous to line your pockets off the misery of the poor. Outrageous, the crimes some human beings must endure. It's a blessing to wash your face in the summer solstice rain. It's outrageous a man like me stand here and complain. But I'm tired.

No matter how bad someone has it, there are others who have it worse. Remembering that makes life a lot easier and allows you to take pleasure in the blessings you have been given.

There are people who are suffering beyond description. They are innocent people, they didn't bring this upon themselves. They are the victims of the sins of other people. And while it's hard to see, it's important to understand that these people exist.

Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.

I had a very comfortable life, but there were people who spent their life in prison, whose families were destroyed.

I have so much. Why did it all happen to me? There has to be a reason.

But as well may you, when urging a man up-hill with a heavy load upon his back, and with your lash also upon his back, tell him, that be has nothing to do either with the load or the lash.

Every burden is a blessing.

Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away the hunger.

There's so much absurdity. Poverty is so absurd.

There are two things that one must get used to or one will find life unendurable: the damages of time and injustices of men.

Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.

Ignorance, filth, and poverty are the missionaries of crime.

… the unhappy Peasant cannot survive in his humble shelter; today pigswill is his only nourishment; what was once lavished on swine is now shared between man and beast. The People ask only for bread; they are even willing to pay for it with the sweat of their brows: at least let them eat it without watering it with tears.

It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die.

Our sweat and our blood have fallen on this land to make other men rich. The pilgrimage is a witness to the suffering we have seen for generations

Today's world is very cruel.

It is definitely true that adversity and hardship are not evenly distributed.

People who are underprivileged have more to grieve and have more to overcome.

The one year the Lord took my greatest physical gift, he gave me the greatest gift you could have in children. So that was a real equalizer. And I would take that trade any day of the week.

You only recognize how good something is if you've been through the bad.

The amount of suffering I've seen is beyond belief. The amount of inequality is beyond belief.

It's hard to see blessings in a violent culture