Alice Roosevelt Quotes

If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody come sit next to me.

I can do one of two things. I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice Roosevelt. (His 19-year-old daughter.) I cannot possibly do both.

I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches.

I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches." by Alice Roosevelt Longworth

The secret to eternal youth is arrested development

If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me.

My specialty is detached malevolence.

My father (Theodore Roosevelt) always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening.

If you can't say something good about someone, sit right here by me.

It seemed as though Theodore's passion for Alice far exceeded his genuine knowledge of her.

When he arrived, he found that the two most important women in his life—his mother and his young wife—were dying. At 3:00 a.m. on February 14, Valentine’s Day, Martha Roosevelt, still a vibrant, dark-haired Southern belle at forty-six, died of typhoid fever. Eleven hours later, her daughter-in-law, Alice Lee Roosevelt, who had given birth to Theodore’s first child just two days before, succumbed to Bright’s disease, a kidney disorder. That night, in his diary, Roosevelt marked the date with a large black “X” and a single anguished entry: “The light has gone out of my life.

She had a cheerful countenance, and that sometimes disguised her habit of looking on the world with what she called “detached malevolence.

Father [Teddy] always wanted to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the baby at every christening.

His eldest daughter, Alice, once described her father as wanting to be the “bride at every wedding, and the corpse at every funeral.”1

Among the guests who appeared on Information, Please were Ben Hecht, George S. Kaufman, Basil Rathbone, Dorothy Thompson, Lillian Gish, Alexander Woollcott, H. V. Kaltenborn, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Carl Sandburg, Albert Spalding, Boris Karloff, Marc Connelly, Dorothy Parker, Beatrice Lillie, and Postmaster General James Farley. Prizefighter Gene Tunney surprised the nation with his knowledge of Shakespeare. Moe Berg, Boston Red Sox catcher, had a

The family remonstrated with me on the subject from time to time, though they never actually ordered me not to smoke. They began by requesting that I should not smoke "under their roof." Whereat I smokedon the roof, up the chimney, out of doors, and in other houses. Then I was told not to smoke in their presence. Finally, even that lapsed, and I puffed away when and where I pleased except in public.

Sometimes I scarcely recognize the white-haired biddy I’ve become; I miss the hedonistic hellion who smoked foul-smelling cigarettes

Truman had written to his mother and sister. “She’s one nice girl,” he told them in another letter, “and I’m so glad she hasn’t turned out like Alice Roosevelt and a couple of the Wilson daughters.

An appalling double tragedy overshadowed the joy that should have welcomed Alice Lee Roosevelt's entrance to the world on February 12, 1884.

An appalling double tragedy overshadowed the joy that should have welcomed Alice Lee Roosevelt's entrance to the world on February 12, 1884. The popular, young New York assemblyman Theodore Roosevelt lost both his beautiful wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, and his beloved mother, Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, on Valentine's Day 1884. He gave the infant her mother's name, a wet nurse, a temporary home, and then relegated her to an afterthought. The family turned in upon itself, lost in grief at the sudden and unexpected deaths, too heartbroken to celebrate Alice's birth. It was the last time anything would eclipse Alice Roosevelt.

He was also an avowed teetotaler. Josephus Daniels had recently banned alcohol from all navy ships, yards, and stations, suggesting instead that the men drink coffee. Thus the mocking phrase “a cup of Joe” was born.

Nonetheless, Eleanor got even with Franklin for the Lucy Mercer mess. As part of her agreeing to stay married, she forced Franklin to make a considerable sacrifice: their sex life. She was thirty-four. He was thirty-six. They never slept in the same bed again.

When she marched herself into the White House to complain about the paltry number of highly placed women in his administration, he created the President’s Commission on the Status of Women—and made her co-chair.*

On the Monday after the inauguration, Eleanor conducted a press conference in the Red Room. That was noteworthy on its own; no First Lady had ever held her own White House press conference before. Eleanor also added a twist: she only allowed female reporters to attend. It was her form of affirmative action, a way to underscore the disadvantages women faced in most professions, including the media.*

For all their differences, the cousins share part of at least one important legacy: they short-circuited the twentieth century’s rules of gender. Their roles as power players are all the more impressive given that they didn’t even have the right to vote until they were thirty-six. Alice

I do not mind riding in day coaches...Please do not put yourself or the railroad to extra expense.--First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt

Not surprisingly , Alice's interest in her career as a lecturer lasted about as long as an after-dinner cigarette.

boy should never die doing the thing he loved. He should die warm in an old man’s bed, fondly recalling all those wild adventures. “You have my condolences,

No race, no religion must ever be permitted to come up when American is meeting with American. The Ku Klux Klan or any other organization which endeavors to do otherwise is committing an un-American act.”38

The intra-family rivalry ultimately grew so intense the two sides could not even agree on how to pronounce their name: Rose-eh-velt (Oyster Bay) or Rooze-eh-velt (Hyde Park). —

(The touchiest, and perhaps most ingenious, Soviet argument was to question what right the United States had to determine the notion of individual freedom given the plight of American blacks living under Jim Crow laws. Unfortunately for the Soviets, Eleanor Roosevelt was the last person to pick that fight with.)

The writers chose a gem of an image reflecting the duration of Alice’s talkathon, that of Wilcox planting a redwood which will get to the sawmill before she relinquishes the phone. In their respectful closing the Jordans extend best wishes to Harry Truman who became president after Roosevelt’s death five days before this broadcast.

Theodore Roosevelt, his daughter Alice Roosevelt Longworth remarked, always wanted to be “the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral”; a contemporary thought him “a dazzling…spectacle of a human engine driven at full speed.