Eleanor Roosevelt

There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep.

If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively.

Women are like tea bags. You never know how strong they are until they are in hot water.

It is a brave thing to have courage to be an individual; it is also, perhaps, a lonely thing. But it is better than not being an individual, which is to be nobody at all.

I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance.

Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life.

The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder – in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.

Look to make your course regular, that men may know beforehand what they may expect.

The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil.

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.

Originality is a device that untalented people use to impress other untalented people to protect themselves from talented people…

We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.

If they had not landed there would be some reason for celebrating the fact.

Death then, being the way and condition of life, we cannot love to live if we cannot bear to die.

There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man’s own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.

This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.