“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”

—  Helen Keller , book The Story of My Life

Source: Address to the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf at Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (8 July 1896) http://www.afb.org/mylife/book.asp?ch=P3Ch4, quoted in supplement to The Story of My Life

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar." by Helen Keller?
Helen Keller photo
Helen Keller 156
American author and political activist 1880–1968

Related quotes

Henri Barbusse photo

“The cult of the masterpieces of art and thought is the only impulse of the soul which, by general consent, has always soared above patriotic littlenesses.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XX The Cult
Context: If, from the idea of motherland, you take away covetousness, hatred, envy and vainglory; if you take away from it the desire for predominance by violence, what is there left of it?
It is not an individual unity of laws; for just laws have no colors. It is not a solidarity of interests, for there are no material national interests — or they are not honest. It is not a unity of race; for the map of the countries is not the map of the races. What is there left?
There is left a restricted communion, deep and delightful; the affectionate and affecting attraction in the charm of a language — there is hardly more in the universe besides its languages which are foreigners — there is left a personal and delicate preference for certain forms of landscape, of monuments, of talent. And even this radiance has its limits. The cult of the masterpieces of art and thought is the only impulse of the soul which, by general consent, has always soared above patriotic littlenesses.

Eleanor Roosevelt photo

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Disputed
Variant: No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.
Source: Sometimes claimed to appear in her book This is My Story, but in The Quote Verifier by Ralph Keyes (2006), Keyes writes on p. 97 that "Bartlett's and other sources say her famous quotation can be found in This is My Story, Roosevelt's 1937 autobiography. It can't. Quotographer Rosalie Maggio scoured that book and many others by and about Roosevelt in search of this line, without success. In their own extensive searching, archivists at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, have not been able to find the quotation in This Is My Story or any other writing by the First Lady. A discussion of some of the earliest known attributions of this quote to Roosevelt, which may be a paraphrase from an interview, can be found in this entry from Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/03/30/not-inferior/.

Red Symons photo

“No-one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

Red Symons (1949) Australian broadcaster and musician

Attributed quotes

Marguerite Yourcenar photo

“One must not fear the words anymore when one consented to the things.”

Marguerite Yourcenar (1903–1987) French writer

On ne doit plus craindre les mots lorsqu'on a consenti aux choses.
Alexis (1929)

Anaïs Nin photo

“And in his eyes he had the look of the cat who inspires a desire to caress but loves no one, who never feels he must respond to the impulses he arouses.”

Anaïs Nin book Delta of Venus

Source: Delta of Venus

Susan Sontag photo

“One can never ask anyone to change a feeling.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

Virginia Woolf photo

“There are moments when one can neither think nor feel, she thought, and if one can neithre feel nor think, where's one?”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer
Vincent Van Gogh photo

“It is not only by one's impulses that one achieves greatness, but also by patiently filing away the steel wall that separates what one feels from what one is capable of doing.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)
Simone de Beauvoir photo

“This does not mean that one should consent to failure, but rather one must consent to struggle against it without respite.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Ethics of Ambiguity

Conclusion
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
Context: A conquest of this kind is never finished; the contingency remains, and, so that he may assert his will, man is even obliged to stir up in the world the outrage he does not want. But this element of failure is a very condition of his life; one can never dream of eliminating it without immediately dreaming of death. This does not mean that one should consent to failure, but rather one must consent to struggle against it without respite.

Related topics