Favorite Quotations
~
Eleanor Roosevelt
Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt
In the long run there is no more liberating, no more exhilarating experience than to determine one’s position, state it bravely, and then act boldly. Friendship with oneself is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world. Be flexible, but stick to your principles. Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than fear, to try rather than not to try. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by each 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. About the only value the story of my life may have is to show that one can, even without any particular gifts, overcome obstacles that seem insurmountable if one is willing to face the fact that they must be overcome. Cynicism seems to me a form of philosophical defeat. It comes only when you have given up any thought or hope of achievement. Anger is one letter away from danger. Every time you meet a situation, though you think at the moment 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 were before. I have only two remedies for weariness: one is change and the other is relaxation. Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people. If life were predictable, it would cease to be life, and be without flavor. A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.
"All of life is a constant education." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt