Abraham Lincoln was a student of “The Bible” and a lover of Shakespeare. No wonder he’s widely admired for his mastery of the English language. He had a genius for concise, pithy prose — he never wasted a word and every word he used was packed with meaning. Consider his definition of wealth: simply a superfluity of things we don’t need.”

He couldn’t abide tedious writing and once condemned a professor of Greek for it. He was challenged by diplomat who noted, “The author of that history, Mr. President, is one of the profoundest scholars of the age. Indeed, it may be doubted whether any man of our generation has plunged more deeply in the sacred fount of learning.” “Yes, or come up drier,” Lincoln responded.

Emerson compared him to Aesop for the simplicity and power of his prose:

In one speech, describing the suppression of debate he said, “These popular sovereigns are at their work, blowing out the moral lights all around us.”

When in Congress, he portrayed President Polk’s message about the Mexican War as “the half-insane mumblings of a fever-dream.”

He once described the quest for military glory as “the attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood; the serpent’s eye that charms to destroy.”

Speaking of the helplessness of the American slave, “They have him in his prison-house. They have searched his person and have left no prying instrument with him. One after another they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him, and now they have him, as it were, bolted in with a lock of a hundred keys…”

When he was urged not to make his “house divided against itself,” he said: “Friends, the time has come when these sentiments should be uttered, and if it is decreed that I should go down because of this speech, then let me go down linked with the truth….If I had to draw a pen across my record and erase my whole life from sight, and I had one poor gift or choice left as to what I should save from the wreck, I should choose that speech and leave it to the world unerased.”

Lincoln has been called “The Great Expounder,” and his words lit a fire that changed the world. Inspiring, well crafted words we can learn from as we all write on.