Rutherford B. Hayes Quotes

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

Man has fallen victim to seduction since times immemorial.

Weakness arouses evil. The American people know this.

A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.

No one is above temptation. No one is above life in general.

Nothing is easier than sinning.

About the nature of human beings. I discovered that confronted by temptation, we will always fall. Given the right circumstances, every human being on this earth would be willing to commit evil.

Sometimes I feel something akin to rage At the corrupted morals of this age!

People can so easily be tempted by slackness... and by money.

We are all afflicted by original sin; people succumbing to temptations to do and to be.

... Any county's moral strength, or its moral weakness, is quickly measurable by the street attire and attitude of its women - especially its young women. Wherever ... spiritual values have been submerged, if not destroyed, by an emphasis upon ... material things, invariably the women reflect it.

No one is immune to temptation. Not even a hero. Not even a nobody. Not even people like you and me. Lust is never very far away. And just when you least expect it, there it is again.

A sinful heart makes feeble hand.

A nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy.

The vices of youth now exceed my powers, but not my fancy.

Other vices make their own way; this makes way for all vices. He that is a drunkard is qualified for all vice.

Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation.

Humankind's chief fault is that they have so many small ones.

No one is so good that he is immune from temptation. We will never be entirely free from it. . . . There is no order so holy, no place so secret where there will be no temptation.

We often wonder that certain men and women are left by God to the commission of sins that shock us. We wonder how, under the temptation of a single hour, they fall from the very heights of virtue and of honor into sin and shame. The fact is that there are no such falls as these, or there are next to none. These men and women are those who have dallied with temptation--have exposed themselves to the influence of it, and have been weakened and corrupted by it.

Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.

If the sins of the flesh ever got old I didn't ever want enough years on me to know it.

The devil is no longer looking for an open door in your life. He will take any crack you give him.

"Akrasia" [weakness of will] in rational beings is as common as wine in France.