There is hardly a word from the Latin or the Greek in them.
The use of quaint, homely similies and illustrations was another of Lincoln's methods. When the mayor of New York, in the panic and bewilderment which followed the breaking out of the Civil War, proposed that New York City be taken out of the Union and made a free city—another Hamburg—Lincoln disposed of the plan in one sentence:
It will be some time before the front door sets up housekeeping on its own account.
When his plan of reconstruction was objected to as not elaborate enough, Lincoln defended it with an illustration:
Admit that my policy is in the beginning to what the final policy will be in the end as an egg is to the chicken. Don't you think that you will get the chicken quicker by hatching the egg than by smashing it?
His speeches were full of homely epigrams which needed only to be heard to be admitted, and which stuck forever in his hearers' memories:
You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
