Eleanor Roosevelt

Lest I keep my complacent way I must remember somewhere out there a person died for me today. As long as there must be war, I ask and I must answer was I worth dying for?

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.

When you know to laugh and when to look upon things as too absurd to take seriously, the other person is ashamed to carry through even if he was serious about it.

It’s your life-but only if you make it so.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual; you have an obligation to be one. You cannot make any useful contribution in life unless you do this.

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.

When I look back on all the worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

On with dance, let joy be unconfined, is my motto; whether there’s any dance to dance or any joy to unconfined.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

The betrothed and accepted lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden by her acceptance. She was heaven while he pursued her, but she cannot be heaven if she stoops to one such as he!

A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.

Only poetry inspires poetry.

Justice though moving with tardy pace, has seldom failed to overtake the wicked in their flight.

We learned about dignity and decency – that how hard you work matters more than how much you make… that helping others means more than just getting ahead yourself.

There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

Youth is unduly busy with pampering the outer person.

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

Such as take lodgings in a head that’s to be let unfurnished.