ScrapSayings, Quotes from Powerful Women

Quotes are arranged by author, alphabetically.

Abigail Adams (bio)

  • Great necessities call out great virtues.

  • Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.

  • If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.

Louisa May Alcott (bio)

  • Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.

  • Make each day useful and cheerful and prove that you know the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be happy, old age without regret and life a beautiful success.

Cathy Allen

  • Life brings simple pleasures to us every day. It is up to us to make them wonderful memories.

Kathleen Andrus

  • I am responsible for my own well being, my own happiness. The choices and decisions I make regarding my life directly influences the quality of my days.

Maya Angelou (bio)

  • If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. And don't complain.

  • One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Susan B. Anthony (bio)

  • Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation or social standards never can bring about reform. Those who are really in earnest are willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathies with despised ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.

  • The day will come when men will recognize woman as his peer, not only at the fireside, but in councils of the nation. Then, and not until then, will there be the perfect comradeship, the ideal union between the sexes that shall result in the highest development of the race.

  • The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball - the further I am rolled the more I gain.

Jane Austen (bio)

  • To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.

Lucille Ball (bio)

  • I think knowing what you cannot do is more important than knowing what you can.

Drew Barrymore (bio)

  • I never regret anything. Because every little detail of your life has made you into who you are in the end.

Countess of Blessington

  • Prejudices are the chains forged by ignorance to keep men apart.

Erma Bombeck (bio)

  • All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.

  • Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead.

  • Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you.

  • Car designers are just going to have to come up with an automobile that outlasts the payments.

  • Children make your life important.

  • Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?

  • Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.
    If Erma had lived to see Madonna's wonderful performance in Evita, she might have replaced Madonna with someone else … like Paris Hilton.

  • The Grass is always green over the septic tank.

  • Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.

  • Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.

  • Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It's literary suicide.

  • I was too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security and too tired for an affair.

  • If you begin to look like your passport photo, it's time to go home.

  • In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn't danced on television.

  • It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows.

  • It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.

  • My second favorite household chore is ironing; my first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.

  • The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.

  • When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me."

Carol Burnett (bio)

  • I have always grown from my problems and challenges, from the things that didn't work out. That's when I've really learned.

  • Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.

  • When you have a dream you've got to grab it and never let go.

  • Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.

Barbara Bush (bio)

  • At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict, or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child or a parent.

  • Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family.

  • I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell this to my children, they just about throw up.

  • May your future be worthy of your dreams.

  • Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the President's spouse. I wish him well!

  • To us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there.

  • You don't just luck into things. You build them step-by-step, whether it's friendships or opportunities.

Mariah Carey

  • You really have to look inside and find your inner strength, and say, "I'm proud of what I am and who I am, and I'm just going to be myself."

Rosalynn Carter (bio)

  • Do what you can to show you care about other people, and you will make our world a better place.

  • A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be.

  • If you doubt you can accomplish something, then you can't accomplish it. You have to have confidence in your ability, and then be tough enough to follow through.

  • If we have not achieved our early dreams, we must either find new ones or see what we can salvage from the old. If we have accomplished what we set out to do in our youth, we need not weep like Alexander the Great that we have no more worlds to conquer. Get up and start helping others. Make a difference in someone else's life.

  • Informed journalists can have a significant impact on public understanding of mental health issues, as they shape debate and trends with the words and pictures they convey, … They influence their peers and stimulate discussion among the general public, and an informed public can reduce stigma and discrimination.

  • There is nothing more important than a good, safe, secure home.

  • You must accept that you might fail; then, if you do your bestand still don't win, at least you can be satisfied that you've tried. If you don't accept failure as a possibility, you don't set high goals, you don't branch out, you don't try - you don't take the risk.

Marie Curie (bio)

  • Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.

  • Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.

  • I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.

  • I have frequently been questioned, especially by women, of how I could reconcile family life with a scientific career. Well, it has not been easy.

  • I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.

  • I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.

  • Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

  • You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.

Agnes DeMille (bio)

  • Dance in the body you have.

Emily Dickinson (bio)

  • Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes.

  • Dwell in possibility.

  • Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.

  • Forever is composed of nows.

  • Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words - and never stops at all.

  • I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.

  • If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.

  • Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.

  • Luck is not chance, it's toil; fortune's expensive smile is earned.

  • My friends are my estate.

  • Saying nothing… sometimes says the most.

  • The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.

  • To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

  • Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.

  • Where thou art, that is home.

Phyllis Diller (bio)

  • A bachelor is a guy who never made the same mistake once.

  • Best way to get rid of kitchen odors: Eat out.

  • Cleaning house while the kids are still growing, is like shoveling snow while it is still snowing.

  • Housework can't kill you, but why take a chance?

  • I want my children to have all the things I couldn't afford. Then I want to move in with them.

  • It's a good thing that beauty is only skin deep, or I'd be rotten to the core.

  • Most children threaten at times to run away from home. This is the only thing that keeps some parents going.

  • My photographs don't do me justice - they just look like me.

  • My recipe for dealing with anger and frustration: set the kitchen timer for twenty minutes, cry, rant, and rave, and at the sound of the bell, simmer down and go about business as usual.

  • The reason why women don't play football is because eleven of them would never wear the same outfit in public.

  • A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.

  • Whatever you may look like, marry a man your own age - as your beauty fades, so will his eyesight.

  • You know you're old if they have discontinued your blood type.

  • You know you're old if your walker has an airbag.

Patty Duke (bio)

  • I know that without treatment I would not have never been able to harness my creativity in such a successful way.

  • I never did quite fit the glamor mode. It is life with my husband and family that is my high now.

  • If I have any message for others, it is to go for help early and not to be a resistant patient.

  • It is up to people like me who have access to the media and the support of most of the community I live in to spread the word. It thrills me to talk to someone and see in their eyes that a connection has been made, to see that communion of spirit.

  • No matter what your laundry list of requirements in choosing a mate, there has to be an element of good luck and good fortune and good timing.

  • One of my jobs that I think is almost God-given is my ability to communicate, and I must use that to reach out to people who are in a position that they think is hopeless .

Linda Ellerbee

  • If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a noose around your neck?

Myrlie Evers

  • When you hate, the only one that suffers is you because most of the people you hate don't know it and the rest don't care.

Debbi Fields

  • The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. Remember, the greatest failure is to not try. Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it.

Jane Fonda

  • You can do one of two things; just shut up, which is something I don't find easy, or learn an awful lot very fast, which is what I tried to do.

Jodie Foster (bio)

  • How will your experience pave the way for a new voice in America: I hope it will take you out these doors, out into the open air. You will breathe it in your lungs and say, "From now on this is my story." - speech given at the University of Pennsylvania commencement 2006

Anne Frank (bio)

  • How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

  • I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.

  • Oh, if only … the whole world would realize that people were really kindly disposed toward one another, that they are all equal and everything else is just transitory! How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start slowly changing the world…Give of yourself … even if it is only kindness! …give again and again, don't lose courage…

  • Parents can only give good advice or put them [children] on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.

  • Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.

Bonnie Friedman

  • An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth.

Ellen Goodman

  • I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced that they are about to change the world, I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another. Dr. King took little steps, won little wars and asked all of us to do the same.

Whoopi Goldberg

  • I fear waking up one morning and finding out it was all for nothing. We're here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to lead people through the darkness.

  • Well when I was nine years old Star Trek came on. I looked at it and I went screaming through the house, "Come here, mum, everybody, come quick, come quick, there's a black lady on television and she ain't no maid!" I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be…

  • What I am is a humanist before anything - before I'm a Jew, before I'm black, before I'm a woman. But somehow you are supposed to be credits to our race. The mere fact that I am still around makes me a credit to my race, which is the human race. And my beliefs are for the human race -- they don't exclude anyone.

Martha Graham

  • You are unique, and if that is not fulfilled then something has been lost.

Helen Hayes

  • The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.

Katharine Hepburn (bio)

  • Genius is an infinite capacity for taking life by the scruff of the neck.

  • If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.

  • If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.

  • Only the really plain people know about love -- the very fascinating ones try so hard to create an impression that they very soon exhaust their talents.

  • Vitality! That's the pursuit of life, isn't it?

  • We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers - but never blame yourself. It's never your fault. But it's always your fault, because if you wanted to change you're the one who has got to change.

Helen Hunt (bio)

  • People say you have to be what you want your children to be… It makes you work on yourself, because it's instant Karma! What ever you say to them can come right back at you! - Red Book Interview by Margot Daugherty

  • Life has a way of growing you up!

Angelina Jolie (bio)

  • Who are we if we are not useful to others.

  • If you don't get out of the box you were raised in you won't understand how much bigger the world is.

Erica Jong

  • Courage is the only magic worth having.

Barbara Jordan (bio)

  • American's mission was and still is to take diversity and mold it into a cohesive and coherent whole that would espouse virtues and values essential to the maintenance of civil order. There is nothing easy about that mission. But it is not mission impossible.
    Outstanding HISD Alumna Award Recipient, October, 1993

  • How do we create a harmonious society out of so many kinds of people? The key is tolerance -- the one value that is indispensable in creating community. One thing is clear to me: We, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves.

  • I have faith in young people because I know the strongest emotions which prevail are those of love and caring and belief and tolerance.
    Article in "On Campus", February 14, 1994

  • What the people want is very simple. They want an America as good as its promise.

Helen Keller (bio)

  • Believe. No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.

  • Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain.

  • The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.

  • Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

  • For three things I thank God every day of my life: thanks that he has vouchsafed me knowledge of his works; deep thanks that he has set in my darkness the lamp of faith; deep deepest thanks that I have another life to look forward to-a life joyous with light and flowers and heavenly song.

  • I do not want the peace which passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

  • I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

  • It gives me a deep, comforting sense that things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.

  • It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal.

  • It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.

  • Keep your face in the sunshine and you will not see the shadows.

  • Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

  • One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

  • Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.

  • Our democracy is but a name. We vote. What does it mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum" and "Tweedledee".

  • Science may have found a cure for most evils, but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all, the human beings.

  • There is no better way to thank God for your sight than by giving a helping hand to someone in the dark.

  • We can do anything we want if we stick to it long enough.

  • We would never learn to be brave and patient if there was only joy in the world.

  • What I am looking for is not out there; it is in me.

  • What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

  • Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.

Rose Kennedy (bio)

  • I looked on child rearing not only as a work of love and duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best that I could bring to it.

  • I tell myself that God gave my children many gifts - spirit, beauty, intelligence, the capacity to make friends and to inspire respect… There was only one gift he held back - length of life.

  • I'm like old wine. They don't bring me out very often, but I'm well preserved.

  • If you can keep your head about you when all about you are losing theirs, its just possible you haven't grasped the situation.

  • Life isn't a matter of milestones, but of moments.

  • Make sure you never, never argue at night. You just lose a good night's sleep, and you can't settle anything until morning anyway.

Coretta Scott King (bio)

  • Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.

  • I believe all Americans who believe in freedom, tolerance and human rights have a responsibility to oppose bigotry and prejudice based on sexual orientation.

  • I'm fulfilled in what I do… I never thought that a lot of money or fine clothes -- the finer things of life -- would make you happy. My concept of happiness is to be filled in a spiritual sense.

  • If American women would increase their voting turnout by ten percent, I think we would see an end to all of the budget cuts in programs benefiting women and children.

  • The more visible signs of protest are gone, but I think there is a realization that the tactics of the late sixties are not sufficient to meet the challenges of the seventies.

  • Segregation was wrong when it was forced by white people, and I believe it is still wrong when it is requested by black people.

Judith Krantz (bio)

  • I'm convinced that (charm) is energy and humor. The two of them combined equal charm.

  • On the one hand, shopping is dependable: You can do it alone, if you lose your heart to something that is wrong for you, you can return it; it's instant gratification and yet something you buy may well last for years.

  • Surely the whole point of writing your own life story is to be as honest as you possibly can, revealing everything about yourself that is most private and probably most interesting for that very reason.

Ann Landers (bio)

  • Class is an aura of confidence that is being sure without being cocky. Class has nothing to do with money. Class never runs scared. It is self-discipline and self-knowledge. It's the sure-footedness that comes with having proved you can meet life.

  • Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful. Dogs are very tolerant.

  • Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and repeat to yourself, the most comforting words of all; this, too, shall pass.

  • If you have love in your life, it can make up for a great many things that are missing. If you don't have love in your life, no matter what else there is, it's not enough.

  • Keep in mind that the true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good.

  • Maturity: Be able to stick with a job until it is finished. Be able to bear an injustice without having to get even. Be able to carry money without spending it. Do your duty without being supervised.

  • Nobody gets to live life backward. Look ahead, that is where your future lies.

  • One out of four people in this country is mentally unbalanced. Think of your three closes friends; if they seem OK, then you're the one.

  • Too many people today know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

  • You need that guy like a giraffe needs strep throat.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (bio)

  • By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacation-less class.

  • Don't wish me happiness-I don't expect to be happy it's gotten beyond that, somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor-I will need them all.

  • For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.

  • Grief can't be shared. Everyone carries it alone. His own burden in his own way.

  • I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.

  • If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.

  • To give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own.

Martina McBride

  • In my daughter's eyes … I am a hero
    I am strong and wise and I know no fear
    But the truth is plain to see … She was sent to rescue me
    I see who I wanna be … In my daughter's eyes
    lyrics

Margaret Mead (bio)

  • Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

  • If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse gift will find a fitting place.

  • We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.

Golda Meir

  • Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either.

Anais Nin (bio)

  • Don't let one cloud obliterate the whole sky.

  • Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

  • The final lesson a writer learns is that everything can nourish the writer. The dictionary, a new word, a voyage, an encounter, a talk on the street, a book, a phrase learned.

  • How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.

  • Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage.

  • The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.

  • We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Sandra Day O'Connor (bio)

  • The courts of this country should not be the places where resolution of disputes begins. They should be the places where the disputes end after alternative methods of resolving disputes have been considered and tried.

  • Do the best you can in every task, no matter how unimportant it may seem at the time. No one learns more about a problem than the person at the bottom.

  • Despite the encouraging and wonderful gains and the changes for women which have occurred in my lifetime, there is still room to advance and to promote correction of the remaining deficiencies and imbalances.

  • Each of us brings to our job, whatever it is, our lifetime of experience and our values.

  • The family unit plays a critical role in our society and in the training of the generation to come.

  • Having family responsibilities and concerns just has to make you a more understanding person.

  • It matters enormously to a successful democratic society like ours that we have three branches of government, each with some independence and some control over the other two. That's set out in the Constitution.

  • The more education a woman has, the wider the gap between men's and women's earnings for the same work.

  • My hope is that 10 years from now, after I've been across the street at work for a while, they'll all be glad they gave me that wonderful vote.

  • My sense is that jurists from other nations around the world understand that our court occupies a very special place in the American system, and that the court is rather well regarded in comparison, perhaps, to their own.

  • The power I exert on the court depends on the power of my arguments, not on my gender.

  • Society as a whole benefits immeasurably from a climate in which all persons, regardless of race or gender, may have the opportunity to earn respect, responsibility, advancement and remuneration based on ability.

  • We don't accomplish anything in this world alone… and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one's life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something.

  • We pay a price when we deprive children of the exposure to the values, principles, and education they need to make them good citizens.

  • When I was nominated in 1981, and took the position, it was incredible to see doors opening for women around the world on courts and for other positions, too. And law schools became more open. More young women started attending law school. It's now half and half, at least, if not more.

  • Young women today often have very little appreciation for the real battles that took place to get women where they are today in this country. I don't know how much history young women today know about those battles.

Dolly Parton (bio)

  • A coat of many colors

  • I still close my eyes and go home - I can always draw from that.

  • I wanted to be the first woman to burn her bra, but it would have taken the fire department four days to put it out.

  • I'm not going to limit myself just because people won't accept the fact that I can do something else.

  • I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb… and I also know that I'm not really blond.

  • I'm old enough and cranky enough now that if someone tried to tell me what to do, I'd tell them where to put it.

  • If you don't like the road you're walking, start paving another one.

  • If you talk bad about country music, it's like saying bad things about my momma. Them's fightin' words.

  • Leave something good in every day.

  • My weaknesses have always been food and men - in that order.

  • Storms make trees take deeper roots.

  • The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.

  • When I'm inspired, I get excited because I can't wait to see what I'll come up with next.

  • You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap!

  • You'll never do a whole lot unless you're brave enough to try.

Mary Pickford (bio)

  • If you have made mistakes, even serious ones, there is always another chance for you. What we call failure is not the falling down but the staying down.

Beatrix Potter (bio)

  • All outward forms of religion are almost useless, and are the causes of endless strife. … Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest. - Journals 1881-1897

  • Most people, after one success, are so cringingly afraid of doing less well that they rub all the edge off their subsequent work.

Eleanor Powell

  • What we are is God's gift to us. What we become is our gift to God.

Victoria Principal (bio)

  • Every crisis is an opportunity. Let us confront the crisis of worldwide apathy, despair and violence by taking the opportunity to join hands across this great earth on January 1, 2000 and rise together like the Phoenix from the ashes to create an active, a hopeful, a kinder civilization.

Eleanor Roosevelt (bio)

  • The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

  • Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.

  • He who loses money, loses much; he who loses a friend, loses much more; He who loses faith, loses all.

  • 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 responsibility.

  • It is not fair to ask of others what you are unwilling to do yourself.

  • It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

  • Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.

  • No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

  • No matter how plain a woman may be if truth and loyalty are stamped upon her face all will be attracted to her.

  • 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.

  • The purpose of life is to live it, to taste and esperiance to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for that newer, nicer experience.

  • To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart

  • When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

  • A woman is like a teabag, you don't know how strong she is until she is in hot water.

  • You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience by which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along."

J. K. Rowling

  • Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

  • The best of us must sometimes eat our words. Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets

  • The consequences of our actions are so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

  • Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire [movie]

  • Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences.

  • Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

  • Hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even in the wizarding world. Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets

  • His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even… knowledge, was foolproof. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

  • If you're holding out for universal popularity, I'm afraid you will be in this cabin for a very long time. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

  • It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

  • It is our choices…that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets

  • It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

  • It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but even more to stand up to your friends.

  • Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain. Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets

  • …people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right. Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince

  • The truth is a beautiful and terrible thing, and therefore should be treated with caution. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

  • Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

  • It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

  • There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Wilma Rudolph (bio)

  • It doesn't matter what you're trying to accomplish. It's all a matter of discipline. I was determined to discover what life held for me beyond the inner-city streets.

Rosalind Russell (bio)

  • Acting is standing up naked and turning around very slowly.

  • Flops are a part of life's menu and I've never been a girl to miss out on any of the courses.

  • Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death.

  • A man is insensible to the relish of prosperity until he has tasted adversity.

  • Taking joy in living is a woman's best cosmetic.

Beverly Sills (bio)

  • A happy woman is one who has no cares at all; a cheerful woman is one who has cares but doesn't let them get her down.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  • The heyday of woman's life is the shady side of fifty.

Gloria Steinem

  • I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.

Barbra Streisand

  • How I wish we lived in a time when laws were not necessary to safeguard us from discrimination.

  • Why does a woman work ten years to change a man's habits and then complain that he's not the man she married?

  • Why is it men are permitted to be obsessed about their work, but women are only permitted to be obsessed about men?

Margaret Thatcher (bio)

  • Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.

Mother Teresa (bio)

  • Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.

  • Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.

  • God doesn't look at how much we do, but with how much love we do it.

  • God is the friend of silence. Trees, flowers, grass grow insilence. See the stars, moon, and sun how they move in silence.

  • If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

  • Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless.

  • Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough; money can be got; but they need your hearts to love them.

  • Service is nothing but love in work clothes.

  • Small things, done in great love, bring joy and peace.

  • Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor. Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting.

  • To keep a lamp burning we have to keep putting oil in it.

  • We live surrounded by a sea of poverty. Nevertheless, this sea can decrease in size. Our work is only a drop in a bucket, but this drop is necessary.

Lily Tomlin

  • I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.

  • If you read a lot of books you are considered well read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well viewed.

  • Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then--we elected them.

  • Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse.

  • The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.

Harriet Tubman (bio)

  • Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.

Wendy Wasserstein

  • Anyone who is considered funny will tell you, sometimes without even your asking, that deep inside they are very serious, neurotic, introspective people.

  • Being a grownup means assuming responsibility for yourself, for your children, and - here's the big curve - for your parents.

  • Don't live down to expectations. Go out there and do something remarkable.

Mae West

  • When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before. At least I'll learn something new.

Betty White (bio)

  • I know unless I'm true to myself I couldn't be happy. Too much emphasis is placed today on externals and too little on character.

  • Keep the other person's well being in mind when you feel an attack of soul-purging truth coming on.

Laura Ingalls Wilder (bio)

  • A good laugh overcomes more difficulties and dissipates more dark clouds than any other one thing.

  • I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.

  • If enough people think of a thing and work hard enough at it, I guess it's pretty nearly bound to happen, wind and weather permitting.

  • Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.

Marianne Williamson (bio)

  • Just as a sunbeam can't separate itself from the sun and a wave can't separate itself from the ocean; we can't separate ourselves from one another. We are all part of a vast sea of love one indivisible divine mind.

Diana Spencer Windsor (bio)

  • Anywhere I see suffering, that is where I want to be, doing what I can.

  • Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.

  • Everyone needs to be valued. Everyone has the potential to give something back.

  • HIV does not make people dangerous to know, so you can shake their hands and give them a hug: Heaven knows they need it.

  • I've always thought that people need to feel good about themselves, and I see my role as offering support to them, to provide some light along the way.

Oprah Winfrey (bio)

  • I will tell you that there have been no failures in my life. I don't want to sound like some metaphysical queen, but there have been no failures. There have been some tremendous lessons.

  • The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.

  • Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.

  • You are what you are by what you believe!

  • Your `calling' isn't something that somebody can tell you about. It's what you feel. It is the thing that gives you juice. It's the thing you are suppose to do. And nobody can tell you what that is. You'll know it deep inside yourself.
    - speech given at Howard University 2007


The Beauty of a Woman

The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair. The beauty of a woman must be seen from in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides.

The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mole, but true beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul. It is the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she shows, and the beauty of a woman with passing years only grows!


She can turn the world on with her smile.
She can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worth while.
Cause it's you girl and you should know it.
Each glance and every little movement will show it.
Love is all around no need to fake it.
You can have the town why don't you take it.
You're gunna make it after all.
-The Mary Tyler Moore Show theme song Lyrics


Women have strengths that amaze men.
They bear hardships and they carry burdens, but they hold happiness, love and joy.
They smile when they want to scream.
They sing when they want to cry.
They cry when they are happy and laugh when they are nervous.
They fight for what they believe in.
They stand up to injustice.
They don't take "no" for an answer when they believe there is a better solution.
They go without so their family can have.
They go to the doctor with a frightened friend.
They love unconditionally.
They cry when their children excel and cheer when their friends get awards.
They are happy when they hear about a birth or a wedding.
Their hearts break when a friend dies.
They grieve at the loss of a family member,
yet they are strong when they think there is no strength left.
They know that a hug and a kiss can heal a broken heart.
Women come in all shapes, sizes and colors.
They'll drive, fly, walk, run or e-mail you to show how much they care about you.
The heart of a woman is what makes the world keep turning.
They bring joy, hope and love.
They have the compassion and ideas.
They give moral support to their family and friends.
Women have vital things to say and everything to give.
HOWEVER, IF THERE IS ONE FLAW IN WOMEN, IT IS THAT THEY FORGET THEIR WORTH.


The 5 stages of a woman's life:
1) Growing Up
2) Fill It Out
3) Slim It Down
4) To Hold It In
5) and To heck with it!


Tips:

-- Honor the women in your life in your album and let them know how you feel with a flip book or album just for them.

-- Use pictures of the women that mean so much to you and write how they have changed or encouraged your life.

-- Use some of the quotes from famous women to enhance your stories. There are a lot of famous women I look at for inspiration. My mother, aunt, grandmother and sisters are not famous but just as brave and smart.

-- Tell them what you think of them and, more over, how they have helped you.