Helen Keller citations

Page 4

“Quand une porte du bonheur se ferme, une autre s'ouvre ; mais souvent nous regardons si longtemps la porte fermée que nous ne voyons pas celle qui nous a été ouverte.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.”

“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.”

“I am conscious of a soul-sense that lifts me above the narrow, cramping circumstances of my life. My physical limitations are forgotten- my world lies upward, the length and the breadth and the sweep of the heavens are mine!”

“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.”