Grayson Matera > Grayson's Quotes

“Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, This is My Story

“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.”
― Olin Miller

“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

“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. ”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt

“What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail?”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“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 in 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.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, It Seems to Me: Selected Letters

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

“Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life. ”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. 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

“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

“Don't call a woman a bitch. Call her an ass-hole. It still gets your point across and it's not sexist.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together, and if we are to live together we have to talk.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“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.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“Today is the oldest you've ever been, and the youngest you'll ever be again.”
― 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, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

“Be confident, not certain”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“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, This is My Story

“If you can develop this ability to see what you look at, to understand its meaning, to readjust your knowledge to this new information, you can continue to learn and to grow as long as you live and you’ll have a wonderful time doing it.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“It seems to me of great importance to teach children respect for life. Towards this end, experiments on living animals in classrooms should be stopped. To encourage cruelty in the name of science can only destroy the finer emotions of affection and sympathy, and breed an unfeeling callousness in the young towards suffering in all living creatures.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“Love can often be misguided and do as much harm as good, but respect can do only good. It assumes that the other person's stature is as large as one's own, his rights as reasonable, his needs as important.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

“The most unhappy people in the world are those who face the days without knowing what to do with their time. But if you have more projects than you have time for, you are not going to be an unhappy person. This is as much a question of having imagination and curiosity as it is of actually making plans.”
― 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