Rutherford B. Hayes Quotes on Morality
-
In avoiding the appearance of evil, I am not sure but I have sometimes unnecessarily deprived myself and others of innocent enjoyments.
-
Virtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice.
-
We have now become pretty well acquainted with the sugar-growing part of Texas. The life of a planter who has a fair start in the world is one of the most independent imaginable. We here find the pleasures of fashionable life without its tyranny. I doubt, however, whether a person of Northern education could so far forget his home-bred notions and feelings as ever to be thoroughly Southern on the subject of slavery. We have seen none of 'the horrors' so often described, but on the other hand I have seen nothing to change my Northern opinions.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Every age has its temptations, its weaknesses, its dangers. Ours is in the line of the snobbish and the sordid.
-
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.
-
Conscience is the authentic voice of God to you.