Eleanor Roosevelt

Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be.

I think I have a good deal of my Uncle Theodore in me, because I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.

Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.

Those who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present.

A man’s personal defects will commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men.

To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.

When one wanted one’s interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people’s tricks.

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

If you have inner peace, nobody can force you to be a slave to the outer reality.

There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it.

I’m proof against that word failure. I’ve seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

The superfluous, a very necessary thing.

They say that history repeats itself, so if you don’t learn from the past you will make the same mistakes. So I have become an archaeologist of my own history. Digging up what has long since been buried, exhuming those forgotten fragments. Trying to distinguish what is real from folklore, trying to gain understanding, rather than relying on myths.

Common sense is the best distributed thing in the world, for we all think we possess a good share of it.

Every stroke our fury strikes is sure to hit ourselves at last.

Nothing does reason more right, than the coolness of those that offer it: For Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders, than from the arguments of its opposers.

If you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don’t prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list.

The disgrace of others often keeps tender minds from vice.