Rutherford B. Hayes quotes

Must swear off from swearing. Bad habit.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Habit #Bad Habits #Swearing

To vote is like the payment of a debt, a duty never to be neglected, if its performance is possible.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Voting #Debt #Vote

We all agree that neither the Government nor political parties ought to interfere with religious sects. It is equally true that religious sects ought not to interfere with the Government or with political parties. We believe that the cause of good government and the cause of religion suffer by all such interference.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Religious #Party #Believe

An amazing invention - but who would ever want to use one?
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Want #Use #Invention

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

#Hard Times #Men #Cities

One of the tests of the civilization of people is the treatment of its criminals.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Civilization #People #Presidential

I saw the man my friendwants pardoned, Thomas Flinton. He is a bright, good-looking fellow.... Of his innocence all are confident. The governor strikes me as a man seeking popularity, who lacks the independence and manhood to do right at the risk of losing popularity. Afraid of what will be said. He is prejudiced against the Irish and Democrats.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Men #Risk #Independence

No man, however benevolent, liberal, and wise, can use a large fortune so that it will do half as much good in the world as it would if it were divided into moderate sums and in the hands of workmen who had earned it by industry and frugality. The piling up of estates often does great and conspicuous good.... But no man does with accumulated wealth so much good as the same amount would do in many hands.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Wise #Men #World

Have been reading "Genesis" several Sundays, not as a Christian reads for "spiritual consolation," "instruction," etc., not as aninfidel reads to carp and quarrel and criticize, but as one who wishes to be informed and furnished in the earliest and most wonderful of all literary productions. The literature of the Bible should be studied as one studies Shakespeare, for illustration and language, for its true pictures of man and woman nature, for its early historical record.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Bible #Christian #Spiritual

One thing you may be sure of, I was not a party to covering up anything.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Party #Corruption

One point in my public life: I did all I could for the reform of the civil service, for the building up of the South, for a soundcurrency, etc., etc., but I never forgot my party.... I knew that all good measures would suffer if my Administration was followed by the defeat of my party. Result, a great victory in 1880. Executive and legislature both completely Republican.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Party #Political #Suffering

Crimes increase as education, opportunity, and property decrease. Whatever spreads ignorance, poverty and, discontent causes crime.... Criminals have their own responsibility, their own share of guilt, but they are merely the hand.... Whoever interferes with equal rights and equal opportunities is in somereal degree, responsible for the crimes committed in the community.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Ignorance #Responsibility #Opportunity

He [William Merritt Chase] is, I suspect, getting a very truthful likeness. I would like it better if [it] was not so gray, so cramped about the eyes, and not quite so corpulent. But is this not quarreling with nature?
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Eye #Truthful #Appearance

The ex-Presidential situation has its advantages, but with them are certain drawbacks. The correspondence is large. The meritorious demands on one are large. More independent out than in place, but still something of the bondage of the place that was willingly left. On the whole, however, I find many reasons to be content.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Retirement #Independent #Reason

I do not think a revival of business will be greatly postponed by [Samuel J.] Tilden's election. Business prosperity does not, inmy judgment, depend on government so much as men commonly think.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Men #Thinking #Election

How strange a scene is this in which we are such shifting figures, pictures, shadows. The mystery of our existence--I have no faith in any attempted explanation of it. It is all a dark, unfathomed profound.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Faith #Dark #Profound

My only objection to the arrangements there is the two-in-a-bed system. It is bad.... But let your words and conduct be perfectlypure--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

#Mother #Homosexuality

My father and mother in 1817 were forty-nine days on the road with their emigrant wagons [from Vermont] to Ohio. More than two days for each hour that I spent in the same journey.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Mother #Travel #Father

A few ideas seem to be agreed upon. Help none but those who help themselves. Educate only at schools which provide in some form for industrial education. These two points should be insisted upon. Let the normal instruction be that men must earn their own living, and that by the labor of their hands as far as may be. This is the gospel of salvation for the colored man. Let the labor not be servile, but in manly occupations like that of the carpenter, the farmer, and the blacksmith.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Education #School #Men

I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it seems best to do so, and when I speak I can, and do usually, quit when I am done. This talent, or these two talents, I have cultivated. Silence and concise, brief speaking have got me some laurels, and, I suspect, lost me some. No odds. Do what is natural to you, and you are sure to get all the recognition you are entitled to.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Silence #Done #Recognition

The best hopes of any community rest upon that class of its gifted young men who are not encumbered with large possessions.... I now speak of extensive scholarship and ripe culture in science and art.... It is not large possessions, it is large expectations, or rather large hopes, that stimulate the ambition of the young.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Art #Ambition #Men

My ambition for station was always easily controlled. If the place came to me it was welcome. But it never seemed to me worth seeking at the cost of self-respect, or independence. My family were not historic; they were well-to-do, did not hold or seek office. It was easy for me to be contented in private life. An honor was no honor to me, if obtained by my own seeking.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Ambition #Office #Independence

I am asked if I would not be gratified if my friends would procure me promotion to a brigadier-generalship. My feeling is that I would rather be one of the good colonels than one of the poor generals. The colonel of a regiment has one of the most agreeable positions in the service, and one of the most useful. "A good colonel makes a good regiment," is an axiom.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#War #Feelings #Promotion

While I am in favor of the Government promptly enforcing the laws for the present, defending the forts and collecting the revenue,I am not in favor of a war policy with a view to the conquest of any of the slave States; except such as are needed to give us a good boundary. If Maryland attempts to go off, suppress her in order to save the Potomac and the District of Columbia. Cut a piece off of western Virginia and keep Missouri and all the Territories.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#War #Cutting #Giving

In the great and deep qualities of mind, heart, and soul, there is no change. Homer and Solomon speak to the same nature in man that is reached by Shakespeare and Lincoln. but in the accidents, the surroundings, the change is vast. All things now are mobile--movable.
-- Rutherford B. Hayes

#Heart #Men #Soul