Helen Keller Quotes
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Sometimes, it is true, a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist as I sit alone and wait at life’s shut gate. Beyond there is light, and music, and sweet companionship; but I may not enter. Fate, silent, pitiless, bars the way…Silence sits immense upon my soul. Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, ‘there is joy is self-forgetfulness.’ So I try to make the light in others’ eyes my sun, the music in others; ears my symphony, the smile on others’ lips my happiness.
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How futile are words in the ears of those who mourn.
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The saddest thing in life is people with sight, but without vision.
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Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
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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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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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Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other's welfare, social justice can never be attained.
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Education should train the child to use his brains, to make for himself a place in the world and maintain his rights even when it seems that society would shove him into the scrap-heap.
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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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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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I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
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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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I have found out that though the ways in which I can make myself useful are few, yet the work open to me is endless.
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Tolerance is the first principle of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think.
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One must envision the higher life and behave as if it were a fact before it can unfold.
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Deep, solemn optimism, it seems to me, should spring from this firm belief in the presence of God in the individual; not a remote, unapproachable governor of the universe, but a God who is very near every one of us, who is present not only in earth, sea and sky, but also in every pure and noble impulse of our hearts.
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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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Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design.
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Smells are the fallen angels of the senses.
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Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.
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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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The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.
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It was my teacher's genius, her quick sympathy, her loving tact which made the first years of my education so beautiful. It was because she seized the right moment to impart knowledge that made it so pleasant and acceptable to me.
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Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.