Eleanor Roosevelt

Happiness is not a goal … it’s a by-product of a life well lived.

You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give.

If someone betrays you once, it's their fault; if they betray you twice, it's your fault.

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience by which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.

If you lose money you lose much, if you lose friends you lose more, If you lose faith you lose all.

Never be bored, and you will never be boring.

I could not at any age be content to take my place in a corner by the fireside and simply look on.

One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.

I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president's wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.

Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.

Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.

Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it.

Old age has deformities enough of its own. It should never add to them the deformity of vice.

In all our contacts it is probably the sense of being really needed and wanted which gives us the greatest satisfaction and creates the most lasting bond.

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

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.

Campaign behavior for wives: Always be on time. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Lean back in the parade car so everybody can see the president.

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me 'understand' something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression.

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

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.

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.

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

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

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

The only advantage of not being too good a housekeeper is that your guests are so pleased to feel how very much better they are.

The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.

I once 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.

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.

I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experience behind him.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide. We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.

There are practical little things in housekeeping which no man really understands.