Rutherford B. Hayes: Trending quotes (page 3)

“Let every man, every corporation, and especially let every village, town, and city, every county and State, get out of debt and keep out of debt. It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Diary (13 July 1879)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Time

“We have dancing … from soon after sundown until a few minutes after nine o’clock…. Occasionally the boys who play the female partners in the dances exercise their ingenuity in dressing to look as girlish as possible. In the absence of lady duds they use leaves, and the leaf-clad beauties often look very pretty and always odd enough.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Letter to Sophia Birchard Hayes (10 July 1862)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Beauty , Exercises , Boy , Dance

“It is the desire of the good people of the whole country that sectionalism as a factor in our politics should disappear.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Fourth State of the Union Address (6 December 1880)

People , Country

“Virtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Diary (21 December 1843), referring to Aristotle's Ethics
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

“My only objection to the arrangements there is the two-in-a-bed system. It is bad…. But let your words and conduct be perfectly pure — such as your mother might know without bringing a blush to your cheek…. If not already mentioned, do not tell your mother of the doubling in bed.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Letter to his son, Rutherford P. Hayes (26 February 1875)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

“The general review of the past tends to satisfy me with my political life. No man, I suppose, ever came up to his ideal. The first half [of] my political life was first to resist the increase of slavery and secondly to destroy it…. The second half of my political life has been to rebuild, and to get rid of the despotic and corrupting tendencies and the animosities of the war, and other legacies of slavery.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Diary (17 February 1882)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Life , War , Past

“I hope you will be benefitted by your churchgoing. Where the habit does not Christianize, it generally civilizes. That is reason enough for supporting churches, if there were no higher.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Letter to his son, Webb Hayes (26 February 1875)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Hope , Support

“One of the tests of the civilization of people is the treatment of its criminals.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Diary (30 October 1892)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

People

“While your rheumatism stays with you I naturally feel anxious to hear often. If you should be so unlucky as to become a cripple, it will certainly be bad, but you may be sure I shall be still a loving husband, and we shall make the best of it together.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (12 March 1865])
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Love , Feeling , Nature

“The only road, the sure road to unquestioned credit and a sound financial condition is the exact and punctual fulfilment of every pecuniary obligation, public and private, according to its letter and spirit.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Speech at New England Society Dinner, Brooklyn (21 December 1880)

“Unjust attacks on public men do them more good than unmerited praise. They are hurt less by undeserved censure than by undeserved commendation. Abuse helps; often praise hurts.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Diary (14 July 1889)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Men , Help , Hurt

“I still feel just as I told you, that I shall come safely out of this war. I felt so the other day when danger was near. I certainly enjoyed the excitement of fighting our way out of Giles to the Narrows as much as any excitement I ever experienced. I had a good deal of anxiety the first hour or two on account of my command, but not a particle on my own account. After that, and after I saw that we were getting on well, it was really jolly. We all joked and laughed and cheered constantly.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (26 May 1862)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

War , Way , Feeling , Fight

“The progress of society is mainly—is, in its proper sense, the improvement in the condition of the workingmen of the world.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Diary(27 February 1890)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

World , Sense

“For honest merit to succeed amid the tricks and intrigues which are now so lamentably common, I know is difficult; but the honor of success is increased by the obstacles which are to be surmounted. Let me triumph as a man or not at all.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Diary (7 November 1841)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Success

“In avoiding the appearance of evil, I am not sure but I have sometimes unnecessarily deprived myself and others of innocent enjoyments.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

As quoted in Rutherford B. Hayes, and His America (1954) by Harry Barnard. p. 481

Appearance , Evil

“That's an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Reportedly to Alexander Graham Bell after a demonstration of the telephone, as quoted in Future Mind : The Microcomputer-New Medium, New Mental Environment (1982) by Edward J. Lias, p. 2 but author did not footnote or in any other way cite a source for the quotation, and the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center has found no primary-source evidence that Rutherford B. Hayes made the comment. The same article erroneously states that President Hayes had his first experience with the telephone in 1876 in a "trial conversation between Washington and Philadephia." Rutherford B. Hayes was president of the United States in the years 1877-1881. His well documented experience with the telephone occurred in 1877 while Hayes was in Rhode Island. Prior to becomng disputed here, this statement was treated as probably spurious in "Obama’s whopper about Rutherford B. Hayes and the telephone" in the Washington Post (16 March 2012) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-whopper-about-rutherford-b-hayes-and-the-telephone/2012/03/15/gIQAel6SFS_blog.html?wprss=fact-checker, which asserts Hayes installed a phone only months later, and that the Providence Journal (29 June 1877) reported his words during the demonstration as "That is wonderful!"
Disputed

“The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Diary (12 December 1890)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Wealth

“Do not let your bachelor ways crystallize so that you can’t soften them when you come to have a wife and a family of your own.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Letter to his son, Webb Hayes (20 March 1890)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Family , Way

“Wars will remain while human nature remains. I believe in my soul in cooperation, in arbitration; but the soldier’s occupation we cannot say is gone until human nature is gone.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Diary (11 August 1890)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

War , Soul , Nature

“Personally I do not resort to force — not even the force of law — to advance moral reforms. I prefer education, argument, persuasion, and above all the influence of example — of fashion. Until these resources are exhausted I would not think of force.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

On attempts at an alcohol prohibition amendment, in his Diary (9 October 1883)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Education , Law , Fashion , Thinking