Home > Work > You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life
21 " I know that we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them. "
― Eleanor Roosevelt , You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life
22 " Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth. "
23 " I think I have a good deal of my Uncle Theodore in me, because I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. "
24 " Obedience may have its uses, but it is no substitute for willing, uncoerced co-operation. "
25 " I wish with all my heart that every child could be so imbued with a sense of the adventure of life that each change, each readjustment, each surprise--good or bad--that came along would be welcomed as part of the whole enthralling experience. "
26 " One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. They will gravitate as automatically as the needle to the north. Somehow, it is unnecessary, in any cold-blooded sense, to sit down and put your head in your hands and plan them. All you need to do is to be curious, receptive, eager for experience. And there’s one strange thing: when you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else. "
27 " I think everyone, at some time in his life, has this happen to him, comes face to face with the bitter realization that he has failed in something that means a tremendous amount and probably in a relation that is close to him. Life teaches you that you cannot attain real maturity until you are ready to accept this harsh knowledge, this limitation in yourself, and make the difficult adjustment. Either you must learn to allow someone else to meet the need, without bitterness or envy, and accept it; or somehow you must make yourself learn to meet it. If you refuse to accept the limitation in yourself, you will be unable to grow beyond this point. "
28 " Meeting smaller emergencies and learning to deal with them had given me the confidence to deal with this larger emergency. So, little by little, I found out how to do things. After each catastrophe you don’t worry so much the next time, and each time you emerge stronger from your victory. "
29 " To be mature you have to realize what you value most. It is extraordinary to discover that comparatively few people reach this level of maturity. They seem never to have paused to consider what has value for them. They spend great effort and sometimes make great sacrifices for values that, fundamentally, meet no real needs of their own.... Not to arrive at a clear understanding of one’s own values is a tragic waste. You have missed the whole point of what life is for. "
30 " Get ahead of whom? There is no one I want to shove past. I just want to get ahead of myself, make myself as big as I can, but not measure myself by someone else. "
31 " Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try. For one thing we know beyond all doubt: Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, “It can’t be done. "
32 " When you stop learning you stop living in any vital and meaningful sense. "
33 " Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart. Don’t be concerned about whether people are watching you or criticizing you. The chances are that they aren’t paying any attention to you. It’s your attention to yourself that is so stultifying. "
34 " Nothing alive can stand still, it goes forward or back. Life is interesting only as long as it is a process of growth; or, to put it another way, we can grow only as long as we are interested. "
35 " To leave the world richer—that is the ultimate success. "
36 " 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. "
37 " Perhaps the most essential thing for a continuing education is to develop the capacity to know what you see and to understand what it means. Many people seem to go through life without seeing. "
38 " We obtain our education at home, at school, and, most important, from life itself. "
39 " As a people, I am afraid, we tend too often to brush aside with impatience, sometimes with discourtesy, customs and points of view which are alien to us. "
40 " Your ambition should be to get as much life out of living as you possibly can, as much enjoyment, as much interest, as much experience, as much understanding. Not simply to be what is generally called “a success. "