Eleanor Quotes

Every woman wants to be first to someone sometime in her life and that desire is the explanation for many strange things women do. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

It is not yet a feeling that points her in a direction. It is just the feeling of a vacuum, a void waiting to be filled. ~ Eleanor Catton

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

To undo mistakes is always harder than not to create them originally, but we seldom have foresight. Therefore, we have no choice but to try to correct our past mistakes. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

...Learn to concentrate, to give all your attention to the thing at hand, and then to be able to put it aside and go on to the next thing without confusion.
My husband said that being President of the United States meant that you saw more kinds of people, took up more subjects, and learn more about a variety of things than anyone else. But it required complete concentration on the person you were with and on what he was saying. When that person left the room, you pulled down a shade in your mind, and you were ready, with your attention free, for what the next person had to say. You might have to shift from banking to forestry, but each subject had the attention and concentration it required and each, in turn, was put in the back of the mind, ready to be called upon when needed. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

I am trying to decide between the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,' he said presently. 'I am afraid my history is such that I can't manage both at once.

'Hi - no need for the truth at all,' said Paddy Ryan. 'Who said anything about the truth? You're a free man in this country, Walter Moody. You tell me any old rubbish you like, and if you string it out until we reach the junction at Kunara, then I shall count it as a very fine tale. ~ Eleanor Catton

When the destiny of a nation is in a woman's bedroom, the best place for the historian is in the antechamber. - CHARLES-AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE ~ Eleanor Herman

This freedom of which men speak, for which they fight, seems to some people a perilous thing. It has to be earned at a bitter cost and then - it has to be lived with. For freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor should never have told them about Park's house, but she'd been dying to tell somebody. (This was how people ended up in jail after committing the perfect crime.) ~ Rainbow Rowell

In my experience people are rarely contented to end up where they started. ~ Eleanor Catton

This was the Hart Eleanor had known years ago, the one she'd agreed without hesitation to marry. He'd had the body of a god, a smile that melted her heart, a sinful glint in his eyes that had been just for her and her alone. ~ Jennifer Ashley

At the age of fifty-six Eleanor Stoddard was still a beautiful woman. She owned three hotels in France and another two in England. From nothing at all, she had built an empire. Eleanor had it all. Her one weakness was the young man sleeping beside her. ~ Barbara Taylor Bradford

I love you', he said.
'I know', she said.
'You know?' he repeated. She smiled, so he kissed her.
'You're not the Han Solo in this relationship, you know.'
'I'm totally the Han Solo', she whispered.
It was good to hear her. It was good to remember it was Eleanor under all this new flesh.
'Well, I'm not the Princess Leia,' he said. ~ Rainbow Rowell

[We need to push] for what we want, not just what we can get. ~ Eleanor Smeal

Your dad loves you, Eleanor said. And she
was right. But it didn't matter. That was table
stakes. His dad loved him in a completely obligatory way ~ Rainbow Rowell

I watched my friend Eleanor give birth," she said. "Once you've seen a child born, you realize a baby's not much more than a reconstituted ham and cheese sandwich. Just a little anagram of you and what you've been eating for nine months. ~ Lorrie Moore

He got why Eleanor tried so hard to look different. Sort of. It was because she was different - because she wasn't afraid to be. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Does that mean there'll be no engagement ball?"
"There will be," he said, "once I convince Josefina to say yes."
"She turned you down?" Zachary asked skeptically.
"She kicked me, actually. My timing did leave something to be desired."
"Josefina kicked you," Eleanor repeated. At his nod, she pursed her lips.
"Perhaps I do like her after all. ~ Suzanne Enoch

Everyone has the right to work, to free choice, to employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protectior against unemployment. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

This morning, when she got on the bus, it kind of felt like he was waiting for her. He was holding a comic called Watchmen, and it looked so ugly that Eleanor decided not to bother eavesdropping. Or eavesreading. Whatever. (She liked it best when he read the X-Men, even though she didn't get everything that was going on there; the X-Men were worse than General Hospital. It took Eleanor a couple weeks to figure out that Scott Summers and Cyclops were the same guy, and she still wasn't sure what was up with Phoenix.) ~ Rainbow Rowell

A year on, Eleanor remained haunted by what happened to her. She still had no idea where the bacteria came from. Perhaps the foot soak and pedicure she had gotten at a small hair-and-nail shop the day before that wedding. ~ Atul Gawande

When you look for the bad, expecting it, you will get it. When you know you will find the good - you will get that.... ~ Eleanor H. Porter

His manner showed a curious mixture of longing and enthusiasm, which is to say that his enthusiasms were always of a wistful sort, and his longings, always enthusiastic. He was delighted by things of an improbable or impractical nature, which he sought out with the open-hearted gladness of a child at play. When he spoke, he did so originally, and with an idealistic agony that was enough to make all but the most rigid of his critics smile; when he was silent, one had the sense, watching him, that his imagination was nevertheless usefully occupied, for he often sighed, or nodded, as though in agreement with an interlocutor whom no one else could see. ~ Eleanor Catton

Our children should learn the general framework of their government and then they should know where they come in contact with the government, where it touches their daily lives and where their influence is exerted on the government. It must not be a distant thing, someone else's business, but they must see how every cog in the wheel of a democracy is important and bears its share of responsibility for the smooth running of the entire machine. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

You must do the things you think you cannot do. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something. ~ Rainbow Rowell

We've got to stop fracking the earth, fucking women, and screwing the poor. ~ Eleanor Bowman

We have come to accept bigger and bigger things as meaning greater and greater efficiency, more and more prosperity and more and more freedom. The two do not go together of necessity ... ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Bean felt a rush of sweet nostalgia for the woman who had introduced us to E. Nesbit and Edward Eager and Laura Ingalls Wilder ... ~ Eleanor Brown

What are the things that make adults depressed? The master list is too comprehensive to quantify (plane crashes, unemployment, killer bees, impotence, Stringer Bell's murder, gambling addictions, crib death, the music of Bon Iver, et al.) But whenever people talk about their personal bouts of depression in the abstract, there are two obstructions I hear more than any other. The possibility that one's life is not important, and the mundane predictability of day-to-day existence. Talk to a depressed person (particularly one who's nearing midlife), and one (or both) of these problems will inevitably be described. Since the end of World War II, every generation of American children has been endlessly conditioned to believe that their lives are supposed to be great -- a meaningful life is not just possible, but required. Part of the reason forward-thinking media networks like Twitter succeed is because people want to believe that every immaterial thing they do is pertinent by default; it's interesting because it happened to them, which translates as interesting to all. At the same time, we concede that a compelling life is supposed to be spontaneous and unpredictable-- any artistic depiction of someone who does the same thing every day portrays that character as tragically imprisoned (January Jones on Mad Men, Ron Livingston in Office Space, the lyrics to "Eleanor Rigby," all novels set in affluent suburbs, pretty much every project Sam Mendes has ever conceived, etc.) If you know ~ Chuck Klosterman

Many family planning clinics and - and programs that service women have refused now to take women's - United State's money because they feel that it would be unethical, and it could injure their clients even more, their patients even more. That has to be changed. ~ Eleanor Smeal

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 basis of world peace is the teaching which runs through almost all the great religions of the world. "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Christ, some of the other great Jewish teachers, Buddha, all preached it. Their followers forgot it. What is the trouble between capital and labor, what is the trouble in many of our communities, but rather a universal forgetting that this teaching is one of our first obligations. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

She wants her cup of stars." Eleanor ~ Shirley Jackson

You should always own a black dress because no one ever remembers a black dress. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Her carriage bespoke an exquisite misery, a wretchedness so perfect and so absolute that it manifested as dignity, as calm. More than a dark horse, she was darkness itself, the cloak of it. ~ Eleanor Catton

He had conceded in a panic - for it crushed Nilssen's spirit to be held in low esteem by other men. He could not bear to know that he was disliked, for to him there was no real difference between being disliked, and being dislikeable; every injury he sustained was an injury to his very selfhood. ~ Eleanor Catton

The Toreador primogen approached her Ventrue counterpart. When she neared, Eleanor gave Victoria a hug in greeting. Or rather, the Ventrue made it plain she was favoring Victoria with a hug.

When the Kindred separated, Eleanor said, "This looks like a wonderfuil party, my dear. You must be very satisfied." Her face was animated with all the false sincerity she could muster, which was enough to fool and flatter anyone but one as perceptive as Victoria.

Victoria wanted to gut the bitch right here, but she knew she had to be careful. On the other hand, too much care might alert Eleanor as much as a blatant warning, so she had to play along with the Ventrue's double-entendre politics.

"Well thank you Eleanor. Such compliments certainly mean something when they come from you. ~ Stewart Wieck

It is easy to slip into self-absorption, and it is equally fatal. When one becomes absorbed in himself, in his health, in his personal problems, or in the small details of daily living, he is, at the same time losing interest in other people; worse, he is losing his ties to life. From that it is an easy step to losing interest in the world and in life itself. That is the beginning of death. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn't have the power to say
yes. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

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

You forgot 'dashingly handsome.' Dear friend is nice but hardly covers the extent of my qualities."

Eleanor looks up from her own letter writing. "How did she describe me? Because I have always preferred my eyes to be referred to as the 'color of a storm-tossed sea.' If either of you were wondering."

"You did not fare much better. In fact, I think I am ahead. I am a 'dear friend,' and you are merely 'recently ill. ~ Kiersten White

One ingredient of revenge is always pride. ~ Eleanor Dark

Under the dolls were books, a dozen or so, that her mother must have grabbed at random; she wouldn't have known which were Eleanor's favorites. Eleanor was glad to see Garp and Watership Down. It sucked that Oliver's Story had made the cut, but Love Story hadn't. And Little Men was there, but not Little Women or Jo's Boys. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Long ago, I made up my mind that when things were said involving only me, I would pay no attention to them, except when valid criticism was carried by which I could profit. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

This is not a time when women should be patient. We are in a war and we need to fight it with all our ability and every weapon possible. Women pilots, in this particular case, are a weapon waiting to be used. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

There are many ways to be influential. You can work for politicians or in government and make a difference. And for young women who are interested in running for office, you just have to decide you're going to follow Eleanor Roosevelt's maxim about growing skin as thick as the hide of a rhinoceros, and you have to be incredibly well-prepared - better prepared [than a man], actually - and you have to figure out how you're going to present yourself, and you have to have a support group around you, because it can be really a brutal experience. ~ Hillary Clinton

I've known Carolyn [Maloney] for years, by the way. I knew her when she was on the City Council and knew her when she was - when she was running, and we endorsed her very early when she ran for Congress, yet I didn't know some of the stories in here of herself and her struggle, and - and she makes a very - you know, it's - it pulls your heart as well as - but it's very practical. ~ Eleanor Smeal

No writing has any real value which is not the expression of genuine thought and feeling. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor," Daniel said. "Miss Fitt! Wake up!"
I fluttered my eyelids open. "I'm not a misfit anymore," I rasped. "I thought I told you that. ~ Susan Dennard

If people only realized what a war goes on in a child's mind and heart in a situation of this kind, I think they would try to explain more than they do, ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

I believe that it is a great mistake not to stand up for people, even when you differ with them, if you feel that they are trying to do things that will help our country. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Carolyn Maloney is very, very comfortable with a whole host of issues, but on women's issues, she is really just one of the few people who understands that women are not only half of the world and half of the United States, but they need an advocate; that they have to have advocacy; that our issues cannot be ignored. ~ Eleanor Smeal

We can no longer oversimplify. We can no longer build lazy and false stereotypes: Americans are like this, Russians are like that, a Jew behaves in such a way, a Negro thinks in a different way. The lazy generalities - 'You know how women are ... Isn't that just like a man?' The world cannot be understood from a single point of view. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

The only joy in this hard life is serving others. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Success must include two things: the development of an individual to his utmost potentiality and a contribution of some kind to one's world. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

I can't tell you how to succeed, but I can tell you how to fail: Try to please everybody. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Love cannot be reduced to a catalogue of reasons why, and a catalogue of reasons cannot be put together into love. ~ Eleanor Catton

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

who probably didn't know any better; to Louise Simonson & Brent Eric Anderson, for "God Loves, Man Kills"; to Eleanor Wood, for reasons that need no explanation; to Betsy Mitchell, for having faith; and Steve Saffel, for keeping both book ~ Chris Claremont

To experience sublime natural beauty is to confront the total inadequacy of language to describe what you see. Words cannot convey the scale of a view that is so stunning it is felt. ~ Eleanor Catton

It is perfectly serendipitous,' said the boy, descending the steps to the street. 'Fancy that - us meeting a second time! Of course I have wished for it, very much - but they were vain wishes; the kind one makes in twilight states, you know, idly. I remember just what you said, as we rounded the heads of the harbor - in the dawn light. "I should like to see him in a storm," you said. I have thought of it many times, since; it was the most delightfully original of speeches.'
Anna blushed at this: not only had she never heard herself described as an original before, she had certainly never supposed that her utterances qualified as 'speeches. ~ Eleanor Catton

You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

One has to live in Washington to know what a city of rumors it is. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

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

Love was a fever that came along a few years after chicken-pox and measles and scarlet fever. ~ Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

If Eleanor paid too much attention, she hated him. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Well, the reality of her father was that he was a very diseased alcoholic, who died at the age of 34. And one always has to pause to wonder how much you have to drink to die at 34. And he was a really tragic father. I mean, he was absolutely unreliable. He was absolutely involved with various people. He had outside families, outside children, outside wives. He made his wife's life miserable. And she [Eleanor Roosevelt]ignored all of his faults and retained this sense of him as the perfect father. ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook

You're a Catholic priest. Aren't you all drunks?"
"If I wasn't before, being back in your life might drive me to drink. Between you and Eleanor it's a miracle I'm even lucid."
Kingsley pointed at him. "I take that as a compliment."
"You would. ~ Tiffany Reisz

Remember that anybody who is clever enough to set you free is clever enough to enslave you. ~ Eleanor Catton

Inchallah" (God willing.)- MISCHIEF IN FEZ ~ Eleanor Hoffmann

a mantra she attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt: women in politics, she said, "need to develop skin as tough as a rhinoceros hide. ~ Mark Leibovich

Viewers have a way of remembering the celebrity while forgetting the product. I did not know this when I paid Eleanor Roosevelt $35,000 to make a commercial for margarine. She reported that her mail was equally divided. "One half was sad because I had damaged my reputation. The other half was happy because I had damaged my reputation." Not one of my proudest memories. ~ David Ogilvy

Many of the things which we deplore, the prevalence of tuberculosis, the mounting record of crime in certain sections of the country, are not due just to lack of education and to physical differences, but are due in great part to the basic fact of segregation which we have set up in this country and which warps and twists the lives not only of our Negro population, but sometimes of foreign born or even of religious groups. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

I believe that all that we go through here must have some value. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

But shame, for Mannering, was an emotion that attended only failure; he could not be made to feel compunction if he had not, in his own estimation, failed. ~ Eleanor Catton

One should always sleep in all of one's guest beds, to make sure that they are comfortable. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

In a court of law,' he said at last 'a witness takes his oath to speak the truth: his own truth, that is. He agrees to two parameters. His testimony must be the whole truth, and his testimony must be nothing but the truth. Only the second of these parameters is a true limit. The first, of course, is largely a matter of discretion. When we say the whole truth we mean, more precisely, all the facts and impressions that are pertinent to the matter at hand. All that is impertinent is not only immaterial; it is, in many cases, deliberately misleading. Gentlemen, [...] I contend that there are no whole truths, there are only pertinent truths----and pertinence, you must agree, is always a matter of perspective. I do not believe that any of you has perjured himself in any way tonight. I trust that you have given me the truth, and nothing but the truth. But your perspectives are very many, and you will forgive me if I do not take your tale for something whole. ~ Eleanor Catton

It is not that you set the individual apart from society but that you recognize in any society that the individual must have rights that are guarded. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Walter Moody was much experienced in the art of confidences. He knew that by confessing, one earned the subtle right to become confessor to the other, in his turn. A secret deserves a secret, and a tale deserves a tale; the gentle expectation of a response in kind was a pressure he knew how to apply. ~ Eleanor Catton

No one thinks she [Carolyn Maloney] can pass the Paid Family and Medical Leave Act; she passed it through the House. I mean, it's just - she's there. She knows the issues and she makes sure they get done. ~ Eleanor Smeal

It has been a long fight to put the control of our economic system in the hands of the government. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

I see disappointment as something small and aggregate rather than something unified or great. With a little effort, every failure can be turned into something good. ~ Eleanor Catton

Eleanor found herself unexpectedly admiring her own feet. Theodora dreamed over the fire beyond the tips of her toes, and Eleanor thought with deep satisfaction that her feet were handsome in their red sandals; what a complete and separate thing I am, she thought, going from my red toes to the top of my head, individually an I, possessed of attributes belonging only to me. I have red shoes, she thought-that goes with being Eleanor; I dislike lobster and sleep on my left side and crack my knuckles when I am nervous and save buttons. I am holding a brandy glass which is mine because I am here and I am using it and I have a place in this room. I have red shoes and tomorrow I will wake up and I will still be here. 'I have red shoes,' she said very softly, and Theodora turned and smiled up at her. ~ Shirley Jackson

The choices we make are ultimately our responsibility. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

I am opposed to 'right to work' legislation because it does nothing for working people, but instead gives employers the right to exploit labor. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

God, grant me the serenity to stop beating myself up for not doing things perfectly, the courage to forgive myself because I'm working on doing better, and the wisdom to know that You already love me just the way I am. ~ Eleanor Brownn

Beyond the table, there is an altar, with candles lit for Billie Holiday and Willa Carter and Hypatia and Patsy Cline. Next to it, an old podium that once held a Bible, on which we have repurposed an old chemistry handbook as the Book of Lilith. In its pages is our own liturgical calendar: Saint Clementine and All Wayfarers; Saints Lorena Hickok and Eleanor Roosevelt, observed in the summer with blueberries to symbolize the sapphire ring; the Vigil of Saint Juliette, complete with mints and dark chocolate; Feast of the Poets, during which Mary Oliver is recited over beds of lettuce, Kay Ryan over a dish of vinegar and oil, Audre Lorde over cucumbers, Elizabeth Bishop over some carrots; The Exaltation of Patricia Highsmith, celebrated with escargots boiling in butter and garlic and cliffhangers recited by an autumn fire; the Ascension of Frida Khalo with self-portraits and costumes; the Presentation of Shirley Jackson, a winter holiday started at dawn and ended at dusk with a gambling game played with lost milk teeth and stones. Some of them with their own books; the major and minor arcana of our little religion. ~ Carmen Maria Machado

In eighteenth-century Britain, many female friends enjoyed intense relationships, which they celebrated in romantic terms. Some probably compensated for stiff and formal relations with parents by forging close bonds with same-sex friends. In one case, Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby ran away from their families in Ireland to set up home together in Wales, where they would live in mutual harmony for more than fifty years. Known as the Ladies of Llangollen, they attracted visitors from far and wide who venerated their romantic story with never a hint that the friendship might be anything other than platonic ~ Wendy Moore

Cordy slept late, awakening only when the noises of the house and the insistent sunlight became to obvious to be believably incorporated into her dreams any longer. ~ Eleanor Brown

Eleanor Roosevelt loved to write. She was a wonderful child writer. I mean, she wrote beautiful essays and stories as a child. And Marie Souvestre really appreciated Eleanor Roosevelt's talents and encouraged her talents. Also, she spoke perfect French. She grew up speaking French. She's now at a french-speaking school where, you know, girls are coming from all over the world. Not everybody speaks French. ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook

One curious feature about political reform is that so many people feel it is "disloyal" to attempt to rectify the abuses in one's own party. And yet it is obvious that political morality is dependent upon the awakened conscience and private morality of the voters. Such "disloyalty" is simply an evidence of loyalty to principle. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Some folk are dealt a bad hand. But you can't rely on another person's conscience to live the life you want to live. You make do with what you're given; you struggle on. ~ Eleanor Catton

I wish you'd let go and be with me," she whispered against the fingers that brushed against her lips. "You wouldn't have to worry about self-control then."
"Eleanor, the first night we make love will be the greatest test of my self-control. ~ Tiffany Reisz

The idea of fame is repulsive, I want to save the world. ~ Eleanor Antin

When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was comforted by a piece of poetry given to her by a friend: They are not dead who live in lives they leave behind: In those whom they have blessed they live a life again.2 ~ Mark Batterson

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

Alex looks around at Heph, at Diodotus, at handsome Telekles and round-faced Phrixos, ~ Eleanor Herman