8 Rutherford B. Hayes Quotes on Morality

Rutherford B. Hayes quotes on morality

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

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

14. 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.

33. 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.

34. 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.

35. Every age has its temptations, its weaknesses, its dangers. Ours is in the line of the snobbish and the sordid.

50. 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.

63. Conscience is the authentic voice of God to you.