Eleanor Roosevelt

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.

Each time you learn something new you must readjust the whole framework of your knowledge

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.

Today is the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be again.

Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

If in doubt, don’t. If still in doubt, do what’s right.

Women tell men things that they are not likely to find out for themselves.

If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.

It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, Know thyself, and too often leads to a self-estimate which will subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is made evident.

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.

Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.

The natural law of inertia: Matter will remain at rest or continue in uniform motion in the same straight line unless acted upon by some external force.

Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.

You are alive, so be fully alive.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

Silence is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it. There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence. The great Sufi poet Rumi wrote, Only let the moving waters calm down, and the sun and moon will be reflected on the surface of your being.

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.