Helen Keller Quotes
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I fall, I stand still... I trudge on. I gain a little... I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory.
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Usually they are quick to discover that I cannot see or hear.... It is not training but love which impels them to break their silence about me with the thud of a tail rippling against my chair on gambols round the study, or news conveyed by expressive ear, nose, and paw. Often I yearn to give them speech, their motions are so eloquent with things they cannot say.
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Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail.
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As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.
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The joy of surmounting obstacles which once seemed unremovable, and pushing the frontier of accomplishment further — what joy is there like unto it?
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We can drift along with general opinion and tradition, or we can throw ourselves upon the guidance of the soul within and steer courageously toward truth... We have a choice in every event and every limitation and....to choose is to create.
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Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.
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This world is so full of care and sorrow that it is a gracious debt we owe to one another to discover the bright crystals of delight hidden in somber circumstances and irksome tasks.
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I believe war is the inevitable fruit of our economic system.
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The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life. If it be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, then it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy.
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We must not creep along when our souls cry out for us to soar!
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Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. Hear the music of voices, the song of birds, the mighty strains of an orchestra as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow . . . Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again. Glory in all the facts of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you.
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Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
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What really counts in life is the quiet meeting of every difficulty with the determination to get out of it all the good there is.
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I hung about the dangerous frontier of "guess," avoiding with infinite trouble to myself and others the broad valley of reason.
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To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.
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The worst thing in the world is not to be born blind, but to be born with sight, and yet have no vision.
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As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.
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One's life story cannot be told with complete veracity. A true autobiography would have to be written in states of mind, emotions, heartbeats, smiles and tears; not in months and years, or physical events. Life is marked off on the soul by feelings, not by dates.
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I learned that it is possible for us to create light, sound and order within us no matter what calamity befall us in the outer world.
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Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.
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God doesn't promise security from life's storms but security in life's storms. God doesn't always call the equipped, but he will always equip the called. In the long run, avoiding danger is no safer than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
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It is certain that I cannot always distinguish my own thoughts from those I read, because what I read becomes the very substance and text of my mind.
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I will eat grandfather for dinner.