Honesty, good intentions and industry, you will have of course. Without these your career would soon end with the loss of your good name. But you must be ambitious to be a good deal more. Webb Hayes, his son, went on to found what had become the Union Carbide Corporation.

There are two tendencies in all our war talk.... The first is to boast, if not of ourselves and our deeds, at least of our army, our corps, our regiments. The other is to find fault with, to criticize, to censure, to condemn others. If there is a victory, we gained it and must have the credit of it. If there is a failure, it was the fault of the other fellow,--he must be blamed for it.

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.

The melancholy thing in our public life is the insane desire to get higher.

I have the greatest aversion to being a candidate on a ticket with a man whose record as an upright public man is to be in question--to be defended from the beginning to the end.

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.

Fighting battles is like courting girls: those who make the most pretensions and are boldest usually win.