Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.

All of life is a constant education.

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

It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.

To be a citizen in a democracy, a human being must be given a healthy start.

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

If you weren’t such a great man, you’d be a terrible bore.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.

The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune in making money. Men talk as if there were some magic about this. He knows that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent – for every effect a perfect cause – and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.

The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional.

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

I don’t do quagmires.

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.

To be innocent is to be not guilty; but to be virtuous is to overcome our evil inclinations.

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.

Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.

It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.