Eleanor Quotes & Sayings

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. Action brings with it its own courage, its own energy, a growth of self-confidence that can be acquired in no other way — Eleanor Roosevelt

Both men and women are fallible. The difference is, women know it. — Eleanor Bron

The mind must be trained, rather than the memory. — Eleanor Roosevelt

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. — Eleanor Roosevelt

More than being absurdly blond and absurdly messy, the Young Electrician had one of those extraordinarily sweet, extraordinarily vital, strangely mysterious, utterly unexplainable masculine faces that fill your senses with an odd, impersonal disquietude, an itching unrest, like the hazy, teasing reminder of some previous existence in a prehistoric cave, or, more tormenting still, with the tingling, psychic prophecy of some amazing emotional experience yet to come. — Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

Living in the fishbowl is hard enough without worrying about a Secret Service that can't keep mum. — Eleanor Clift

The next war will be a war in which people not armies will suffer, and our boasted, hard-earned civilization will do us no good. Cannot the women rise to this great opportunity and work now, and not have the double horror, if another war comes, of losing their loved ones, and knowing that they lifted no finger when they might have worked hard? — Eleanor Roosevelt

Even the stupidest cat seems to know more than any dog. — Eleanor Clark

And you can really see in all of these issues that are priorities for Eleanor Roosevelt, where the compromises are painful, the compromises are hard, and the difficulties between them really begin to loom very large by 1936, by 1938. — Blanche Wiesen Cook

If we fail to meet our problems here, no one else in the world will do so. If we fail, the heart goes out of progressives throughout the world. — Eleanor Roosevelt

You're of a mind with Mr. Staines.'
'Am I?'
'Yes,' Anna said. 'That is precisely the sort of thing that he would say.'
'Your Mr. Staines is quite the philosopher, Miss Wetherell.'
'Why, Reverend,' Anna said, smiling suddenly, 'I believe you've just paid yourself a compliment. — Eleanor Catton

So you," she said, meeting his eyes, "are a librarian. What does that make me then? A seven-day loan?"
Daniel laughed as he set his book aside. He moved toward her and lightly gripped her knees.
"Seven-day loan ... I'm not sure I like the thought of giving you back." He slid his hands up her thighs and took her by the hips.
"But what about overdue fines?" she asked, playfully flashing her eyes at him.
"I think I can afford them," he said. Eleanor tried to voice another protest but his mouth was already on hers. — Tiffany Reisz

Sooner or later every gardener must face the fact that certain things are going to die on him. It is a temptation to be anthropomorphic about plants, to suspect that they do it to annoy. — Eleanor Perenyi

Men without jobs do not form families. — Eleanor Holmes Norton

No man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Upon your shattered ruins where
This vine will flourish still, as rare,
As fresh, as fragrant as of old.
Love will not crumble. — Eleanor Farjeon

Yet she (Princess Diana) suffered one ancient lament of many princess brides--- her husband didn't love her, hadn't wanted to marry her, rarely slept with her, and far prefered his mistress. — Eleanor Herman

It is today that we create the world of the future. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Oh, fine, Eleanor thought. The children of hell shan't go hungry on my watch. — Rainbow Rowell

Halloween shadows played upon the walls of the houses. In the sky the Halloween moon raced in and out of the clouds. The Halloween wind was blowing, not a blasting of wind but a right-sized swelling, falling, and gushing of wind. It was a lovely and exciting night, exactly the kind of night Halloween should be. — Eleanor Estes

He ceased to be able to distinguish between personal preference and moral imperative, and he ceased to accept that such a distinction was possible. — Eleanor Catton

Why do the X-Men need another girl telepath?" she asked. "This one has purple hair." "It's all so sexist." Park's eyes got wide. Well, sort of wide. Sometimes she wondered if the shape of his eyes affected how he saw things. That was probably the most racist question of all time. "The X-Men aren't sexist," he said, shaking his head. "They're a metaphor for acceptance; they've sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them." "Yeah," she said, "but - " "There's no but," he said, laughing. "But," Eleanor insisted, "the girls are all so stereotypically girly and passive. Half of them just think really hard. Like that's their superpower, thinking. And Shadowcat's power is even worse - she disappears. — Rainbow Rowell

A lucky man ... is a man who was lucky once, and after that, he learned a thing or two about investment. p 553 — Eleanor Catton

No one, Eleanor Roosevelt said, can make you feel inferior without your consent. Never give it. — Marian Wright Edelman

There is no more precious experience in life than friendship. And I am not forgetting love and marriage as I write this; the lovers, or the man and wife, who are not friends are but weakly joined together. One enlarges his circle of friends through contact with many people. One who limits those contacts narrows the circle and frequently his own point of view as well. — Eleanor Roosevelt

When you know to laugh and when to look upon things as too absurd to take seriously, the other person is ashamed to carry through even if he was serious about it. — Eleanor Roosevelt

She wrapped her fingers around his and touched his palm with her thumb.
Her fingers were trembling.
Park shifted in his seat and turned his back to the aisle.
"Okay?" she whispered.
He nodded, taking a deep breath. They both stared down at their hands.
Jesus. — Rainbow Rowell

Long historical books get written by women, but not contemporary experiments, which still seems to be a very male-dominated field. — Eleanor Catton

Would you call it lucky to stay, or lucky to go?"
"I'd call it lucky to choose", said Moody. — Eleanor Catton

So, after all, we are but puppets, creatures of our fate, not commanding it but being molded by it. — Eleanor Roosevelt

The campaign to put a woman on the $20 bill has narrowed the choices down to four finalists. The four finalists are Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Flo from the Progressive Insurance ads. — Conan O'Brien

Most of the work that's done in the world gets done by people who weren't feeling all that well at the time that they did it. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Our Father, who has set a restlessness in our hearts and made us all seekers after that which we can never fully find, forbid us to be satisfied with what we make of life. Draw us from base content and set our eyes on far-off goals. Keep us at tasks too hard for us that we may be driven to Thee for strength. Deliver us from fretfulness and self-pitying; make us sure of the good we cannot see and of the hidden good in the world. Open our eyes to simple beauty all around us and our hearts to the loveliness men hide from us because we do not try to understand them. Save us from ourselves and show us a vision of a world made new. — Eleanor Roosevelt

On the morning of June 20, at a hastily arranged conference at New York's Gramercy Park Hotel, a new umbrella organization was born with Eleanor as honorary chair - the U.S. Committee for the Care of European Children. The purpose of the new committee was to coordinate all the different agencies and resources available in the United States for the care of refugee children. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep. — Eleanor Roosevelt

I don't even know what it means to be Korean..." he said.

"Well, I don't know what it means to be Danish and Scottish," she said. "Does it matter?"

"I think so. Because it's the number one thing people use to identify me. It's my main thing. — Rainbow Rowell

Never be afraid to meet to the hilt the demand of either work, or friendship - two of life's major assets. — Eleanor Robson Belmont

All the way back she talked haltingly about herself, and Amory's love waned slowly with the moon. At her door they started from habit to kiss good night, but she could not run into his arms, nor were they stretched to meet her as in the week before. For a minute they stood there, hating each other with a bitter sadness. But as Amory had loved himself in Eleanor, so now what he hated was only a mirror. Their poses were strewn about the pale dawn like broken glass. The stars were long gone and there were left only the little sighing gusts of wind and the silences between ... but naked souls are poor things ever, and soon he turned homewards and let new lights come in with the sun. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Eleanor Gordon was the most sophisticated in their crowd. She read The New Yorker. — Judy Blume

Every time you meet a situation you 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 were before. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal power should not become too important in any church. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Her profession did not fascinate him in the least, and he had no boyhood memories of tenderness or embarrassment to soften him toward the subtleties of her trade; when he looked at her, he saw only a catalogue of indiscretions. — Eleanor Catton

It's dreadful to feel alone and really be alone. But — Eleanor Catton

To me who dreamed so much as a child, who made a dreamworld in which I was the heroine of an unending story, the lives of people around me continued to have a certain storybook quality. I learned something which has stood me in good stead many times - The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give. — Eleanor Roosevelt

I can't walk five steps without someone on a walkie talkie going, 'She's wandering over there.' I'm pretty stuck, but hey, it's been great. — Eleanor Tomlinson

The constant pressure to bring about conformity is a dangerous thing. — Eleanor Roosevelt

One could know a thousand women, Gascoigne thought; one could take a different girl every night for years and years - but sooner or later, the new lovers would do little more than call to mind the old, and one would be forced to wander, lost, in that reflective maze of endless comparison, forever disappointed, forever turning back. — Eleanor Catton

I should think you could be gladder on Monday mornin' than any other day in the week, because 'twould be a whole week before you'd have another one! — Eleanor Porter

The Pretty Lady's brains were almost entirely in her fingers. — Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

What I have learned from my own experience is that the most important ingredients in a child's education are curiosity, interest, imagination, and a sense of the adventure of life. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Next time,' he said, 'I'll just say, "Eleanor, duck behind these bushes with me, I'm going to lose my mind if I don't kiss you. — Rainbow Rowell

Since everybody is an individual, nobody can be you. You are unique. No one can tell you how to use your time. It is yours. Your life is your own. You mold it. You make it. — Eleanor Roosevelt

He was not surly by temperment, and in fact did not find it difficult to form friendships, nor to allow those friendships to deepen, once they had been formed; he simply preferred to answer to himself. He disliked all burdens of responsibility, most especially when those responsibilities were expected, or enforced
and friendship nearly always devolved into matters of debt, guilt, and expectation. — Eleanor Catton

being acquisitive on a large scale, cannot have value if it is bought at the expense of others. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Organize first for knowledge, first with the object of making us know ourselves as a nation, for we have to do that before we canbe of value to other nations of the world and then organize to accomplish the things that you decide to want. Anddon't make decisions with the interest of youth alone before you. Make your decisions because they are good for the nation as a whole. — Eleanor Roosevelt

He had the singular ability to knock down her carefully bricked defenses, which was a compliment to them both and the secret to their love. — Eleanor Brown

Sleeping was impossible, and we would often be found wandering the house, our white nightgowns gleaming in the darkness, a trio of Lady Macbeths, driven mad by the mercury. — Eleanor Brown

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

The ambition of 'Ten Thousand Saints,' Eleanor Henderson's debut novel about a group of unambitious lost souls, is beautiful. In nearly 400 pages, Henderson does not hold back once: she writes the hell out of every moment, every scene, every perspective, every fleeting impression, every impulse and desire and bit of emotional detritus. — Stacey D'Erasmo

I think that writers of literary fiction would do well to read more books for children. — Eleanor Catton

it's hard to remember that the outside and the inside of people are two very different things. — Eleanor Moran

I think the adverb is a much-maligned part of speech. It's always accused of being oppressive, even tyrannical, when in fact it's so supple and sly. — Eleanor Catton

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

I mean, how many men would have gone on to the floor of the House as Carolyn Maloney did and wear a burkha to show the fight of Afghan women. — Eleanor Smeal

My relationship with 'Pollyanna' is a very personal one, because Pollyanna got me through my childhood. — Eleanor Porter

As he watched her sleep he had often been near-choked with joy; — Eleanor Catton

Eleanor?"
"Yeah?"
He gave her a smile, this one showing his kindness and concern.
"I will take care of you. Forever. — Tiffany Reisz

I wonder if one of the penalties of growing older is that you become more and more conscious that nothing is very permanent. — Eleanor Roosevelt

What counts, in the long run, is not what you read; it is what you sift through your own mind; it is the ideas and impressions that are aroused in you by your reading. It is the ideas stirred in your own mind, the ideas which are a reflection of your own thinking, which make you an interesting person — Eleanor Roosevelt

No matter what happens," Park said, "I love you. — Rainbow Rowell

The word communist, of course, has become a rallying cry for certain people here just as the word Jew was in Hitler's Germany, a way of arousing emotion without engendering thought. — Eleanor Roosevelt

For he was still unable to recall the apparition wholly to his own mind, much less to form a narrative for the pleasures of a third. — Eleanor Catton

I had often joked in my speeches that I had imaginary conversations with Mrs. Roosevelt to solicit her advice on a range of subjects. It's actually a useful mental exercise to help analyze problems, provided you choose the right person to visualize. Eleanor Roosevelt was ideal. — Hillary Clinton

Anybody who's against birth control and abortion has to be a criminal idiot. — Eleanor Clark

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

You've climbed too many mountains and crossed too many rivers to stop and turn back now. — Eleanor Brownn

The world conspires to help those who are in love with the beauty of their dreams. — Eleanor Roosevelt

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

There is, I suppose, no occupation in the world which has an influence on the efficiency and happiness of the members of nearly all other occupations so continuous and so permeating as that of the working housewife and mother. — Eleanor Rathbone

Doesn't help that you're like the hottest priest on the planet."
Soren looked sharply at her. Eleanor went pale.
"I said that out loud."
"Should I pretend I didn't hear it? — Tiffany Reisz

Or maybe, he thought now, he just didn't recognize all those other girls. The way a computer drive will spit out a disk if it doesn't recognize the formatting.
When he touched Eleanor's hand, he recognized her. He knew. — Rainbow Rowell

Absolutely the greatest challenges in dealing with discrimination are with the larger group who needs to consider how they think and act in everyday life. It remains the possibility of the majority to accept the call to change. — Eleanor Holmes Norton

I'm primarily a character actress. — Eleanor Parker

The hard part of loving is that one has to learn so often to let go of those we love, so they can do things, so they can grow, so they can return to us with an even richer, deeper love. — Eleanor Roosevelt

One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education. — Eleanor Roosevelt

If you think of life and death on a continuum, finding the point where it tips is complicated. It cuts across all political lines and gets to the root of our humanity. It requires faith informed by years of intimacy that you're doing what's right for your loved one. — Eleanor Clift

The list of women to potentially be on a major party ticket, in both parties, is embarrassingly short. — Eleanor Clift

Now we are going to have a new noise, Eleanor thought, listening to the inside of her head; it is changing. The pounding had stopped, as though it had proved ineffectual, and there was now a swift movement up and down the hall, as of an animal pacing back and forth with unbelievable impatience, watching first one door and then another, alert for a movement inside, and there was again the little babbling murmur which Eleanor remembered; Am I doing it? She wondered quickly, is that me? And heard the tiny laughter beyond the door, mocking her. — Shirley Jackson

I came upon a telegram from Eleanor Roosevelt herself to Gypsy Rose Lee that read, 'May your bare ass always be shining'. That was the clincher; I had to write about this woman. — Karen Abbott

Feelings, too, are facts. Emotion is a fact. Human experience is a fact. It is often possible to gain more real insight into human beings and their motivation by reading great fiction than by personal acquaintance. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Fred, in the light from the window above, looked for a moment like a newly hatched chick, with his twitchy little head and blinking dark eyes and face open to the world. Birdie felt something like fear then, something ragged and dark lurking just out of sight. Fred could die just like Eleanor did, just like the Wallace boy who'd gone to bed with a headache and died in the night when a blood vessel exploded in his brain. The slimmest margin separated life from not-life. Pastor Hardy boomed on and on. "We must be overcomers — Rae Meadows

Hong Kong is the supermarket of Asia. — Eleanor Coppola

I wish to be able to call myself deserving of my lot,' Moody said carefully. 'Luck is by nature underserved. — Eleanor Catton

There are so many demons. Agnes tips the bottle back and her eyes flutter closed, and she swallows, and swallows again, and the burn of it tells her it will be okay, that everything will be just fine, because the burn is always followed by the dark, and the dark is followed by - Peace. Or something very much like it. She drinks, and eventually her grip loosens on the bottle, and she slips into that dark where Esmerelda, where Eleanor, where nobody else is permitted. — Jason Gurley

You can be Han Solo," he said, kissing her throat. "And I'll be Boba Fett. I'll cross the sky for you. — Rainbow Rowell

I keep forgetting who I'm dealing with. The Queen of Kink."
"I'm a trained submissive. More like King's Consort. I'm not worthy to hold actual rank," she said with a wink.
"Well, I'm honored to consort with you."
Eleanor gave him her best wicked grin. "Then consort with me already. — Tiffany Reisz

WHEN A RESTLESS spirit is commissioned, under influence, to solve a riddle for another man, his energies are, at first, readily and faithfully applied. — Eleanor Catton

the toe of an enormous and heroic — Eleanor Roosevelt

Perhaps making movies is a step toward being able to move backward and forward and in and out of linear time. — Eleanor Coppola

It was the duty of every thinking man to expose himself to a great range of characters, situations, and points of view. He had read extensively, and although he favored the Romantics above all others, and never tired of discussing the properties of the sublime, he was by no means a strict disciple of that school, or indeed, of any school at all. — Eleanor Catton