Helen Keller Quotes
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What if in my waking hours a sound should ring through the silent halls of hearing? ... Would the bow and string tension of life snap? Would the heart over weighted with sudden joy stop beating for very excess of happiness?
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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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If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life. If, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.
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Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.
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God himself is not secure, having given man dominion over his work.
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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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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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The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.
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I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light but who see nothing in sea or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books. It were far better to sail forever in the night of blindness with sense, and feeling, and mind, than to be content with the mere act of seeing. The only lightless dark is the night of darkness in ignorance and insensibility.
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There's only one story, the story of your life.
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Look the world straight in the eye.
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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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We cannot freely and wisely choose the right way for ourselves unless we know both good and evil.
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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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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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People often ... have no idea how fair the flower is to the touch, nor do they appreciate its fragrance, which is the soul of the flower.
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Each day comes to me with both hands full of possibilities.
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One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
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The human being is born with an incurable capacity for making the best of things.
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Instead of being satisfied to alleviate suffering, we shall labor hard and continually to prevent it.
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No nation is wise enough to rule another.
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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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Not the senses I have but what I do with them is my kingdom.
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I do not remember a time since I have been capable of loving books that I have not loved Shakespeare.