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Helen Keller Quotes

• 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 cooperate 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. - View Quote Details on Although the world is full of suffering, it is full…
• See also FAQ at Gallaudet University - View Quote Details on See also FAQ at Gallaudet University
• I believe it is a sacred duty to encourage ourselves and others; to hold the tongue from any unhappy word against God’s world, because no man has any right to complain of a universe which God made good, and which thousands of men have striven to keep good. I believe we should so act that we may draw nearer and more near the age when no man shall live at his ease while another suffers. These are the articles of my faith, and there is yet another on which all depends — to bear this faith above every tempest which overfloods it, and to make it a principal in disaster and through affliction. Optimism is the harmony between man’s spirit and of God pronouncing His works good. - View Quote Details on I believe it is a sacred duty to encourage ourselves…
• I understand how it was possible for Spinoza to find deep and sustained happiness when he was excommunicated, poor, despised and suspected alike by Jew and Christian; not that the kind world of men ever treated me so, but that his isolation from the universe of sensuous joys is somewhat analogous to mine. He loved the good for its own sake. Like many great spirits he accepted his place in the world, and confided himself childlike to a higher power, believing that it worked through his hands and predominated in his being. He trusted implicitly, and that is what I do. Deep, solemn optimism, it seems to me, should spring from this firm belief in the presence of God in the individual; not a remote, unapproachable governor of the universe, but a God who is very near every one of us, who is present not only in earth, sea and sky, but also in every pure and noble impulse of our hearts, ‘the source and centre of all minds, their only point of rest.’ - View Quote Details on I understand how it was possible for Spinoza to find…
• The bulk of the world’s knowledge is an imaginary construction. - View Quote Details on The bulk of the world’s knowledge is an imaginary construction.
• 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. - View Quote Details on I had now the key to all language, and I…
• If it is true that the violin is the most perfect of musical instruments, then Greek is the violin of human thought. - View Quote Details on If it is true that the violin is the most…
• The greatest woman of our age. - View Quote Details on The greatest woman of our age.
• We have found that our great philosophers and our great men of action are optimists. So, too, our most potent men of letters have been optimists in their books and in their lives. No pessimist ever won an audience commensurately wide with his genius, and many optimistic writers have been read and admired out of all measure to their talents, simply because they wrote of the sunlit side of life. - View Quote Details on We have found that our great philosophers and our great…
• Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the worlds at a standstill. The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation is the same as in the life of the individual. Pessimism kills the instinct that urges men to struggle against poverty, ignorance and crime, and dries up all the fountains of joy in the world. - View Quote Details on Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while…
• The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrasts between the two lives which it connects. It was the third of March, 1887, three months before I was seven years old. - View Quote Details on The most important day I remember in all my life…
• I read “King Lear ” soon after “Macbeth,” and I shall never forget the feeling of horror when I came to the scene in which Gloster’s eyes are put out. Anger seized me, my fingers refused to move, I sat rigid for one long moment, the blood throbbing in my temples, and all the hatred that a child can feel concentrated in my heart. - View Quote Details on I read “King Lear ” soon after “Macbeth,” and I…
• Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. - View Quote Details on Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
• Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was. “Light! give me light!” was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour. - View Quote Details on Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog,…
• When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us. - View Quote Details on When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often…
• Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow. It’s what sunflowers do. - View Quote Details on Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see…
• The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life. If it be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, then it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy. - View Quote Details on The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in…
• I see the clouds part slowly, and I hear a cry of protest against the bigot. The restraining hand of tolerance is laid upon the inquisitor, and the humanist utters a message of peace to the persecuted. Instead of the cry, “Burn the heretic!” men study the human soul with sympathy, and there enters into their hearts a new reverence for that which is unseen. - View Quote Details on I see the clouds part slowly, and I hear a…
• Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. The things I have learned and the things I have been taught seem of ridiculously little importance compared with their “large loves and heavenly charities.” - View Quote Details on Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No…
• Ruth is so loyal and gentle-hearted, we cannot help loving her, as she stands with the reapers amid the waving corn. Her beautiful, unselfish spirit shines out like a bright star in the night of a dark and cruel age. Love like Ruth’s, love which can rise above conflicting creeds and deep-seated racial prejudices, is hard to find in all the world. - View Quote Details on Ruth is so loyal and gentle-hearted, we cannot help loving…
• Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold. - View Quote Details on Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than…
• Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free. Once I knew only darkness and stillness. Now I know hope and joy. Once I fretted and beat myself against the wall that shut me in. Now I rejoice in the consciousness that I can think, act and attain heaven. My life was without past or future; death, the pessimist would say, “a consummation devoutly to be wished.” But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living. Night fled before the day of thought, and love and joy and hope came up in a passion of obedience to knowledge. Can anyone who escaped such captivity, who has felt the thrill and glory of freedom, be a pessimist? - View Quote Details on Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and…
• It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster. There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference. - View Quote Details on It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and…
• In this child I have seen more of the Divine than has been manifest in anyone I met before. - View Quote Details on In this child I have seen more of the Divine…
• Miss Sullivan touched my forehead and spelled with decided emphasis, “Think.”
  In a flash I knew that the word was the name of the process that was going on in my head. This was my first conscious perception of an abstract idea.
  For a long time I was still… trying to find a meaning for “love” in the light of this new idea. The sun had been under a cloud all day, and there had been brief showers; but suddenly the sun broke forth in all its southern splendour.
  Again I asked my teacher, “Is this not love?”
  “Love is something like the clouds that were in the sky before the sun came out,” she replied. Then in simpler words than these, which at that time I could not have understood, she explained:
  “You cannot touch the clouds, you know; but you feel the rain and know how glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day. You cannot touch love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything. Without love you would not be happy or want to play.”
  The beautiful truth burst upon my mind — I felt that there were invisible lines stretched between my spirit and the spirits of others. - View Quote Details on Miss Sullivan touched my forehead and spelled with decided emphasis,…
• Helen Keller is fellow to Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, Homer, Shakespeare, and the rest of the immortals… She will be as famous a thousand years from now as she is today. - View Quote Details on Helen Keller is fellow to Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, Homer, Shakespeare,…
• She will live on, one of the few, the immortal names not born to die. Her spirit will endure as long as man can read and stories can be told of the woman who showed the world there are no boundaries to courage and faith. - View Quote Details on She will live on, one of the few, the immortal…
• The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important, than those of blindness. Deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus — the sound of the voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir and keeps us in the intellectual company of man. - View Quote Details on The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if…
• Recently I was visited by a very good friend who had just returned from a long walk in the woods, and I asked her what she had observed. “Nothing in particular,” she replied. I might have been incredulous had I not been accustomed to such responses, for long ago I became convinced that the seeing see little.
  How was it possible, I asked myself, to walk for an hour through the woods and see nothing worthy of note? I who cannot see find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I feel the delicate symmetry of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly about the smooth skin of a silver birch, or the rough, shaggy bark of a pine. In spring I touch the branches of trees hopefully in search of a bud, the first sign of awakening Nature after her winter’s sleep. I feel the delightful, velvety texture of a flower, and discover its remarkable convolutions; and something of the miracle of Nature is revealed to me. - View Quote Details on Recently I was visited by a very good friend who…
• The two greatest characters in the 19th century are Napoleon and Helen Keller. Napoleon tried to conquer the world by physical force and failed. Helen tried to conquer the world by power of mind — and succeeded! - View Quote Details on The two greatest characters in the 19th century are Napoleon…
• The highest result of education is tolerance. Long ago men fought and died for their faith; but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage, — the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren and their rights of conscience. Tolerance is the first principal of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think. - View Quote Details on The highest result of education is tolerance. Long ago men…
• Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. - View Quote Details on Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true…
• The idea of brotherhood redawns upon the world with a broader significance than the narrow association of members in a sect or creed; and thinkers of great soul like Lessing challenge the world to say which is more godlike, the hatred and tooth-and-nail grapple of conflicting religions, or sweet accord and mutual helpfulness. Ancient prejudice of man against his brother-man wavers and retreats before the radiance of a more generous sentiment, which will not sacrifice men to forms, or rob them of the comfort and strength they find in their own beliefs. The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next. Mere tolerance has given place to a sentiment of brotherhood between sincere men of all denominations. - View Quote Details on The idea of brotherhood redawns upon the world with a…

About Helen Keller

Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968 ) was an American writer and social activist; an illness (possibly scarlet fever or meningitis ) at the age of 19 months left her deaf and blind.

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