Helen Keller Quotes
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We can decide to let our trials crush us, or we can convert them to new forces of good.
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Everybody talks, nobody listens. Good listeners are as rare as white crows.
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If we spend the time we waste in sighing for the perfect golden fruit in fulfilling the conditions of its growth, happiness will come, must come. It is guaranteed in the very laws of the universe. If it involves some chastening and renunciation, well, the fruit will be all the sweeter for this touch of holiness.
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Rebuffed, but always persevering; self-reproached, but ever regaining faith; undaunted, tenacious, the heart of man labors toward immeasurably distant goals.
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There is in the blind as in the seeing an Absolute which gives truth to what we know to be true, order to what is orderly, beauty to the beautiful, touchableness to what is tangible.
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The attempt to suppress an idea has always and everywhere proved a failure.
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Ideas without action are useless.
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Happiness is the final and perfect fruit of obedience to the laws of life.
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Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.
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I cannot remember how I felt when the light went out of my eyes. I suppose I felt it was always night and perhaps I wondered why the day did not come.
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There is no blindness more insidious, more fatal that this race for profit.
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Optimism, then, is a fact within my own heart. But as I look out upon life, my heart meets no contradiction. The outward world justifies my inward universe of good.
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Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas.
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It is so pleasant to learn about new things. Every day I find how little I know, but I do not feel discouraged since God has given me an eternity in which to learn more.
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I, for one, love strength, daring, fortitude. I do not want people to kill the fight in them; I want them to fight for right things.
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Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.
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Oh, you think the darkness is your ally, but you merely adopted the dark. I was born in it. Molded by it.
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The civilization of a state should be measured by the amount of suffering it prevents and the degree of happiness it makes possible for its citizens.
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Masculine exhalations are, as a rule, stronger, more vivid,more widely differentiated than those of women. In the odor of young men there is something elemental, as of fire, storm, and salt sea. It pulsates with buoyancy and desire. It suggests all the things strong and beautiful and joyous and gives me a sense of physical happiness.
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Speech is the birthright of every child. It is the deaf child's one fair chance to keep in touch with his fellows.
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Let pessimism once take hold of the mind, and life is all topsy-turvy, all vanity and vexation of spirit. There is no cure for individual or social disorder, except in forgetfulness and annihilation.
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What is the use of such terrible diligence as many tire themselves out with, if they always postpone their exchange of smiles with Beauty and Joy to cling to irksome duties and relations?
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For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way. I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory. One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire.
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Doubts and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.