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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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...our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding.
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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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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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Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.
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Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves.
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Happiness is the final and perfect fruit of obedience to the laws of life.
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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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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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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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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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There is no blindness more insidious, more fatal that this race for profit.
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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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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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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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Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.
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We the living, should not think of the dead as lonely because if they could speak to us, they would say: "Do not weep for me, earth was not my true country, I was an alien there: I am at Home where everyone comes."
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Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas.
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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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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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THE most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me