You always admire what you really don't understand.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

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

All human beings have failings, all human beings have needs and temptations and stresses. Men and women who live together through long years get to know one another's failings; but they also come to know what is worthy of respect and admiration in those they live with and in themselves. If at the end one ca n say, This man used to the limit the powers that God granted him; he was worthy of love and respect and of the sacrifices of many people, made in order that he might achieve what he deemed to be his task, then that life has been lived well and there are n o regrets.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

Perhaps in His wisdom the Almighty is trying to show us that a leader may chart the way, may point out the road to lasting peace, but that many leaders and many peoples must do the building.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

If we want a free and peaceful world, if we want to make the deserts bloom and man grow to greater dignity as a human being-we can do it.
--Eleanor Roosevelt