"I was never a beauty," said the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. "There was a time when I was sorry about that, when I was old enough to understand the importance of it and, looking in any mirror, realized it was something I was never going to have. Then I found what I wanted to do in life, and being called pretty no longer had any importance. It was only much later that I realized that not being beautiful was a blessing in disguise. It forced me to develop my inner resources. I came to understand that women who cannot lean on their beauty and need to make something on their own have the advantage. I cannot think of anything more terrible than looking back at the end and feeling that you have not written well in the Book of Life.