Eleanor Roosevelt

In all our contacts it is probably the sense of being really needed and wanted which gives us the greatest satisfaction and creates the most lasting bond.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

The only advantage of not being too good a housekeeper is that your guests are so pleased to feel how very much better they are.

Friendship with oneself is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim; and when you are calculating, calculate.

That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem.

The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.

Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.

He that thinks he can afford to be negligent is not far from being poor.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?

Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity does best discover vice, but adversity does best discover virtue.

How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice…

Life is largely a matter of expectation.

To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals – this alone is worth the struggle.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

No verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by drinkers of water.