“Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.”
Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love
This derives from a folk proverb sometimes attributed to Clementine Paddleford, but in use as an "old proverb" as early as 1908, when Paddeford was only 10 years old.
Misattributed
Source: Eat, Pray, Love
“Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author
“How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author
Source: The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh
“You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
Source: You Learn by Living (1960), p. 29–30
Context: You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." … You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
“The challenge is not to be perfect…it’s to be whole”
Jane Fonda (1937) American actress and activist
Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist
Source: Communion: The Female Search for Love
“There is no such thing as 'too late' in life.”
Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie
Source: Tuesdays with Morrie
“The best protection any woman can have… is courage.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist
“Let nothing dim the light that shines from within”
Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet
Variant: Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica
Frequently attributed to Nin, but without cited source in her work (possibly due to a quotation in Living on Purpose: Straight Answers to Universal Questions (2000) by Dan Millman that attributed the quote to Nin without source).
In March 2013, a former Director of Public Relations at John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, Elizabeth Appell, claimed she had authored the quote in 1979 for an inspirational header on a class schedule: http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2013/03/who-wrote-risk-is-the-mystery-solved/
Disputed
Variant: The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
“What would men be without women? Scarce, sir… mighty scarce.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
“Better to be strong than pretty and useless.”
Lilith Saintcrow book Strange Angels
Source: Strange Angels
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
Preface (December 1960) to The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (1961), p. xix
