Eleanor Roosevelt

There are no have-to’s, just choices.

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.

The giving of love is an education in itself.

Don’t call a woman a bitch. Call her an ass-hole. It still gets your point across and it’s not sexist.

Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

They must first judge themselves, that presume to censure others: And such will not be apt to overshoot the Mark. We are too ready to retaliate, rather than forgive, or gain by Love and Information. And yet we could hurt no Man that we believe loves us. Let us then try what Love will do: For if Men did once see we Love them, we should soon find they would not harm us. Force may subdue, but Love gains: And he that forgives first, wins the [Laurel]. If I am even with my Enemy, the Debt is paid; but if I forgive it, I oblige him for ever.

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

Stress is caused by being here but wanting to be there.

If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.

Real love begins when nothing is expected in return.

A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

Great people are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.

The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.

In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.

To choose time is to save time.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

Then spare the rod and spoil the child.