1
It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.Eleanor Roosevelt
2
The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.Eleanor Roosevelt
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Happiness is not a goal...it's a by-product of a life well lived.Eleanor Roosevelt
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Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.Eleanor Roosevelt
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Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn't have the power to say yes.Eleanor Roosevelt
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No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.Eleanor Roosevelt
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Do what you feel in your heart to be right — for you’ll be criticized anyway.Eleanor Roosevelt
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The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.Eleanor Roosevelt
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No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.Eleanor Roosevelt
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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.Eleanor Roosevelt
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Friendship with oneself is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.Eleanor Roosevelt
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It's your life-but only if you make it so.Eleanor Roosevelt
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Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness.Eleanor Roosevelt
14
I have never felt that anything really mattered but knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could.Eleanor Roosevelt
15
Today is the oldest you've ever been, and the youngest you'll ever be again.Eleanor Roosevelt
16
Once I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: "No good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.Eleanor Roosevelt
17
The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.Eleanor Roosevelt
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Do one thing every day that scares you.Eleanor Roosevelt
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With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.Eleanor Roosevelt
20
You can not live at all if you do not learn to adapt yourself to your life as it happens to be.Eleanor Roosevelt
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All of life is a constant education.Eleanor Roosevelt
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You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give.Eleanor Roosevelt
23
There is a growing wave in this country of fear, and of intolerance which springs from fear. Sometimes it is a religious intolerance, sometimes it is a racial intolerance, but all intolerance grows from the same roots.Eleanor Roosevelt
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No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.Eleanor Roosevelt
25
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?Eleanor Roosevelt
26
Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.Eleanor Roosevelt
27
Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.Eleanor Roosevelt
28
You can't move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn't mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.Eleanor Roosevelt
29
To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.Eleanor Roosevelt
30
Good leaders inspire people to have confidence in their leader. Great leaders inspire people to have confidence in themselves.Eleanor Roosevelt
31
I feel that the care of libraries and the use of books, and the knowledge of books, is a tremendously vital thing, and that we who deal with books and who love books have a great opportunity to bring about something in this country which is more vital here than anywhere else, because we have the chance to make a democracy that will be a real democrac.Eleanor Roosevelt
32
I feel that the care of libraries and the use of books, and the knowledge of books, is a tremendously vital thing, and that we who deal with books and who love books have a great opportunity to bring about something in this country which is more vital here than anywhere else, because we have the chance to make a democracy that will be a real democracy.Eleanor Roosevelt
33
The encouraging thing is that every time you meet a situation, though you may think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it you find that forever after you are freer than you ever were before. If you can live through that, you can live through anything. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.Eleanor Roosevelt
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It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.Eleanor Roosevelt
35
Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heartEleanor Roosevelt
36
Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart. Don't be concerned about whether people are watching you or criticizing you. The chances are that they aren't paying any attention to you. It's your attention to yourself that is so stultifying. But you have to disregard yourself as completely as possible. If you fail the first time then you'll just have to try harder the second time. After all, there's no real reason why you should fail. Just stop thinking about yourself.Eleanor Roosevelt
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You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.Eleanor Roosevelt
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You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.Eleanor Roosevelt
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What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail?Eleanor Roosevelt
40
It seems to me that I cannot afford, as a self-respecting individual, to refuse to do a thing merely because it will make me disliked or bring down a storm of criticism on my head.Eleanor Roosevelt
41
This is your life, not someone else's. It is your own feeling of what is important, not what people will say. Sooner or later, you are bound to discover that you cannot please all of the people around you all of the time. Some of t hem will attribute to you motives you never dreamed of. Some of them will misinterpret your words and actions, making them completely alien to you. So you had better learn fairly early that you must not expect to have everyone understand what you say and what you do.Eleanor Roosevelt
42
We have to make these young people (of the Depression) feel that they are necessary. (They should be given) "certain things for which youth craves — the chance for self-sacrifice for an ideal.Eleanor Roosevelt
43
You not only have a right to be an individual. You have a responsibility.Eleanor Roosevelt
44
Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.Eleanor Roosevelt
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If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively.Eleanor Roosevelt
46
America is not a pile of goods, more luxury, more comforts, a better telephone system, a greater number of cars. America is a dream of greater justice and opportunity for the average man and, if we can not obtain it, all our otherachievements amount to nothing.Eleanor Roosevelt
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What one has to do usually can be done.Eleanor Roosevelt
48
Love can often be misguided and do as much harm as good, but respect can do only good. It assumes that the other person's stature is as large as one's own, his rights as reasonable, his needs as important.Eleanor Roosevelt
49
If you want a world ruled by law and not by force you must build up, from the very grassroots, a respect for law.Eleanor Roosevelt
50
..Learn to concentrate, to give all your attention to the thing at hand, and then to be able to put it aside and go on to the next thing without confusion. My husband said that being President of the United States meant that you saw more kinds of people, took up more subjects, and learn more about a variety of things than anyone else. But it required complete concentration on the person you were with and on what he was saying. When that person left the room, you pulled down a shade in your mind, and you were ready, with your attention free, for what the next person had to say. You might have to shift from banking to forestry, but each subject had the attention and concentration it required and each, in turn, was put in the back of the mind, ready to be called upon when needed.Eleanor Roosevelt
51
I am convinced that every effort must be made in childhood to teach the young to use their own minds. For one thing is sure: If they don't make up their minds, someone will do it for them.Eleanor Roosevelt
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To be mature you have to realize what you value most... Not to arrive at a clear understanding of one's own values is a tragic waste. You have missed the whole point of what life is for.Eleanor Roosevelt
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...so much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty, and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating and destructive effect upon society than the others.Eleanor Roosevelt
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...our children must learn...to face full responsibility for their actions, to make their own choices and cope with the results...the whole democratic system...depends upon it. For our system is founded on self-government, which is untenable if the individuals who make up the system are unable to govern themselves.Eleanor Roosevelt
55
It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.Eleanor Roosevelt
56
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.Eleanor Roosevelt
57
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.Eleanor Roosevelt
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Success must include two things: the development of an individual to his utmost potentiality and a contribution of some kind to one's world.Eleanor Roosevelt
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...no one can afford not to be a man. No position can compensate for coming face to face with a robot when you are alone.Eleanor Roosevelt
60
Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?Eleanor Roosevelt
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It is often the people who refuse to assume any responsibility who are apt to be the sharpest critics of those who do.Eleanor Roosevelt
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...no matter how avid they themselves may be for praise and appreciation, people are often niggardly in giving it to others, however merited it is.Eleanor Roosevelt
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Don't call a woman a bitch. Call her an ass-hole. It still gets your point across and it's not sexist.Eleanor Roosevelt
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Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be.Eleanor Roosevelt
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In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.Eleanor Roosevelt
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One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibilityEleanor Roosevelt
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Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.Eleanor Roosevelt
68
Every time you meet a situation though you think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the torture of the damned once you have met it and lived through it you find that forever after you are freer than you were before.Eleanor Roosevelt
69
Life has got to be lived - that's all there is to it. At seventy I would say the advantage is that you take life more calmly. You know that 'this too shall pass! 'Eleanor Roosevelt
70
Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.Eleanor Roosevelt
71
When you have decided what you believe what you feel must be done have the courage to stand alone and be counted.Eleanor Roosevelt
72
I could not at any age be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiosity must be kept alive. One must never for whatever reason turn his back on life.Eleanor Roosevelt
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Change means the unknown.Eleanor Roosevelt
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Somehow we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.Eleanor Roosevelt
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The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything.Eleanor Roosevelt
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Do not be afraid of mistakes providing you do not make the same one twice.Eleanor Roosevelt
77
Friendship with oneself is all-important because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else.Eleanor Roosevelt
78
What you don't do can be a destructive force.Eleanor Roosevelt
79
For 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.Eleanor Roosevelt
80
If we want a free and peaceful world if we want to make the deserts bloom and man grow to greater dignity as a human being-we can do it.Eleanor Roosevelt
81
When you cease to make a contribution you begin to die.Eleanor Roosevelt
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Life has got to be lived-that's all that there is to it.Eleanor Roosevelt
83
Someone once asked me what I regarded as the three most important requirements for happiness. My answer was: "A feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you a feeling that you have done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work and the ability to love others."Eleanor Roosevelt
84
Happiness is not a goal it is a byproduct.Eleanor Roosevelt
85
When you cease to make a contribution you begin to die.Eleanor Roosevelt
86
The trouble is that not enough people have come together with the firm determination to live the things which they say they believe.Eleanor Roosevelt
87
No leader can be too far ahead of his followers.Eleanor Roosevelt
88
When you get to the end of your rope tie a knot in it and hang on.Eleanor Roosevelt
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You always admire what you really don't understand.Eleanor Roosevelt
90
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.Eleanor Roosevelt
91
This I know. This I believe with all my heart. If we want a free and peaceful world if we want to make the deserts bloom and man grow to greater dignity as a human being- we can do it!Eleanor Roosevelt
92
This I know. This I believe with all my heart. If we want a free and peaceful world if we want to make the deserts bloom and man grow to greater dignity as a human being-we can do it!Eleanor Roosevelt
93
You can't move so fast that you try to change [a situation] faster than people can accept it. That doesn't mean you do nothing but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.Eleanor Roosevelt
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No one from the beginning of time has had security.Eleanor Roosevelt
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Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual you have an obligation to be one.Eleanor Roosevelt
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Criticism ... makes very little dent upon me unless I think there is some real justification and something should be done.Eleanor Roosevelt
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I think somehow we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.Eleanor Roosevelt
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No man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within.Eleanor Roosevelt
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I'm glad I never feel important it does complicate life.Eleanor Roosevelt
100
More people are ruined by victory I imagine than by defeat.Eleanor Roosevelt