Helen Keller Quotes

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“Knowledge is love and light and vision.”

“We can do anything we want as long as we stick to it long enough.”

“So much has been given to me I have not time to ponder over that which has been denied.”

“Your success and happiness lie in you.”

“College isn't the place to go for ideas.”

“There is no better way to thank God for your sight than by giving a helping hand to someone in the dark.”

“I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.”

“I wonder what becomes of lost opportunities? Perhaps our guardian angel gathers them up as we drop them, and will give them back to us in the beautiful sometime when we have grown wiser, and learned how to use them rightly.”

“To keep our faces toward change, and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate, is strength undefeatable.”

“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.”

“One painful duty fulfilled makes the next plainer and easier.”

“Blindness separates people from things;
deafness separates people from people.”

“I thank God for my handicaps. For through them, I have found myself, my work and my God.”

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight and no vision.”

“Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each others welfare, social justice can never be attained.”

“Do not think of todays failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow.”

“It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.”

“While they were saying it couldn't be done, it was done.”

“There is beauty in everything, even in silence and darkness.”

“It has been said that life has treated me harshly; and sometimes I have complained in my heart because many pleasures of human experience have been withheld from me…if much has been denied me, much, very much, has been given me…”

“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.”

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.”

“My friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges.”

“The most beautiful world is always entered through imagination.”

“There is joy in 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.”

“I rejoice to live in such a splendidly disturbing time!”

“… our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding.”

“Great poetry needs no interpreter other than a responsive heart.”

“The infinite wonders of the universe are revealed to us in exact measure as we are capable of receiving them. The keenness of our vision depends not on how much we can see, but on how much we feel.”

“A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.”

“As selfishness and complaint pervert and cloud the mind, so sex with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.”

“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.”

“When one reads hurriedly and nervously, having in mind written tests and examinations, one's brain becomes encumbered with a lot of bric-a-brac for which there seems to be little use.”

“If the blind put their hands in God's, they find their way more surely than those who see but have not faith or purpose.”

“It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears”

“I do not mean to object to a thorough knowledge of the famous works we read. I object only to the interminable comments and bewildering criticisms that teach but one thing: there are as many opinions as there are men.”

“True friends never apart maybe in distance but never in heart”

“Unless we form the habit of going to the Bible in bright moments as well as in trouble, we cannot fully respond to its consolations because we lack equilibrium between light and darkness.”

“The world is not moved only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.”

“To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.”

“I believe in the immortality of the soul because I have within me immortal longings.”

“No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.”

“If it is true that the violin is the most perfect of musical instruments, then Greek is the violin of human thought.”

“Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.”

“To what is good I open the doors of my being, and jealously shut them against what is bad. Such is the force of this beautiful and wilful conviction, it carries itself in the face of all opposition. I am never discouraged by absence of good. I never can be argued into hopelessness.”

“I want to say to those who are trying to learn to speak and those who are teaching them: Be of good cheer. Do not think of to-day's failures, but of the success that may come to-morrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere, and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles — a delight in climbing rugged paths, which you would perhaps never know if you did not sometime slip backward — if the road was always smooth and pleasant. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost. Sometime, somewhere, somehow we shall find that which we seek. We shall speak, yes, and sing, too, as God intended we should speak and sing.”

“[…] 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 coöperate with the good, that it may prevail. I try to increase the power God has given me to see the best in everything and every one, and make that Best a part of my life.”

“Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession. Could they win some visible goal which they have set on the horizon, how happy they would be! Lacking this gift or that circumstance, they would be miserable. If happiness is to be so measured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in a corner with folded hands and weep. 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.”

“Some years ago I met a gentleman who was introduced to me as Mr. McKelway, editor of the Brooklyn Eagle … At the time the compliments that he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for Socialism he reminds me and the public that I am deaf and blind and especially liable to error.… The Eagle and I are at war. When it fights back, let it fight fair.… It is not fair fighting or good argument to remind me and others that I cannot see or hear.”