“I had now the key to all language, and I was eager to learn to use it.”

—  Helen Keller, book The Story of My Life

Source: The Story of My Life (1903), Ch. 6
Context: I had now the key to all language, and I was eager to learn to use it. Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; the words that fall from others' lips they catch on the wing, as it were, delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow and often painful process. But whatever the process, the result is wonderful. Gradually from naming an object we advance step by step until we have traversed the vast distance between our first stammered syllable and the sweep of thought in a line of Shakespeare.

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Helen Keller156
American author and political activist 1880–1968

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