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.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.
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.
I'm so glad I never feel important, it does complicate life!
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 think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.
Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn't have the power to say yes.
What you don't do can be a destructive force.
Friendship with ones self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.
The giving of love is an education in itself.
As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.
Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it.
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.
The Bible illustrated by Dore occupied many of my hours - and I think probably gave me many nightmares.
It is not more vacation we need - it is more vocation.
Actors are one family over the entire world.
The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.
The mother of a family should look upon her housekeeping and the planning of meals as a scientific occupation.
Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.
Autobiographies are only useful as the lives you read about and analyze may suggest to you something that you may find useful in your own journey through life.
Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.
You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.
I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.
What one has to do usually can be done.
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.
Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday.
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.
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.
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.
When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.
Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth.
A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.
Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.
We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.
I do not think that I am a natural born mother... If I ever wanted to mother anyone, it was my father.
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.
Have convictions. Be friendly. Stick to your beliefs as they stick to theirs. Work as hard as they do.
I can not believe that war is the best solution. No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.
When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.
It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.
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.
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 should be curiosity.
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.
The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.
Understanding is a two-way street.
There are practical little things in housekeeping which no man really understands.
Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes... and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.
Old age has deformities enough of its own. It should never add to them the deformity of vice.
