Helen Keller Quotes
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When I recollect the treasure of friendship that has been bestowed upon me I withdraw all charges against life. If much has been denied me, much, very much has been given. So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart I shall say that life is good.
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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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There is no better way to thank God for your sight than by giving a helping hand to someone in the dark.
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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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Militarism. . . is the chief bulwark of capitalism. When it is that militarism is undermined, capitalism will fail.
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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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As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.
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Smell is a fallen angel.
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The human being is born with an incurable capacity for making the best of things.
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The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.
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Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
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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
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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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I take happiness very seriously. It is a creed, a philosophy and an objective.
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Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.
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Poetry is the gate through which I enter the land of enchantment. Once inside the flaming wall, my limitations fall from me, and my spirit is free.
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During the first nineteen months of my life I had caught glimpses of broad, green fields, a luminous sky, trees and flowers which the darkness that followed could not wholly blot out. If we have once seen, "the day is ours, and what the day has shown."
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I do not remember a time since I have been capable of loving books that I have not loved Shakespeare.
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Personally I do not believe in a national agency devoted only to the negro blind because in spirit and principle I am against all segregation, and the blind already have difficulties enough without being cramped and harassed by social barriers.
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They took away what should have been my eyes (but I remembered Milton's Paradise). They took away what should have been my ears, (Beethoven came and wiped away my tears) They took away what should have been my tongue, (but I had talked with god when I was young) He would not let them take away my soul, possessing that I still possess the whole.
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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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Thus I came up out of Egypt and stood before Sinai, and a power divine touched my spirit and gave it sight, so that I beheld many wonders. And from the sacred mountain I heard a voice which said, ‘Knowledge is love and light and vision.
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This great republic is a mockery of freedom as long as you are doomed to dig and sweat to earn a miserable living while the masters enjoy the fruit of your toil.
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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.