"You can pick your nose, and you can pick your Vice President, but you can't pick your Vice President's nose"

Abraham lincoln, as quoted by Edgar Lee Masters

"When I felt that bullet enter my chest, I wisht I'd a stayed at home and gone to jail,
For stealin Ray's hogs.

Better a thousand times the county jail than to lie here
under this marble slab, bearin' the words "PRO PATRIA"

What do they mean, anyway?