Helen Keller ... She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree “The most pathetic person in the world is some one who has sight but no vision.”

 “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.”
― Helen Keller

 “I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.”
― Helen Keller

 “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart”
― Helen Keller

 

 “Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
― Helen Keller

 “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”
― Helen Keller

 “Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.”
― Helen Keller

 “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
― Helen Keller

 “Keep your face to the sun and you will never see the shadows.”
― Helen Keller

 “I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”
― Helen Keller

 “Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”
― Helen Keller

 “What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, For all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.”
― Helen Keller

 “Be of good cheer. Do not think of today's failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.”
― Helen Keller

 “The most pathetic person in the world is some one who has sight but no vision.”
― Helen Keller

 “Never bend your head. Hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.”
― Helen Keller

 “The highest result of education is tolerance”
― Helen Keller

 “People don’t like to think, if one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.”
― Helen Keller

 “I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do something I can do.”
― Helen Keller

 “Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content”
― Helen Keller

 “For three things I thank God every day of my life: thanks that he has vouchsafed me knowledge of his works; deep thanks that he has set in my darkness the lamp of faith; deep, deepest thanks that I have another life to look forward to--a life joyous with light and flowers and heavenly song.”
― Helen Keller

 “When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.”
― Helen Keller

 “Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings.”
― Helen Keller

 “What I'm looking for is not out there, it is in me.”
― Helen Keller

 “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.”
― Helen Keller

 “Literature is my Utopia”
― Helen Keller

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

 “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement ”
― Helen Keller

 “Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.”
― Helen Keller

“The best way out is always through”
― Helen Keller

 “Happiness does not come from without, it comes from within”
― Helen Keller

 “You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

 “We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world”
― Helen Keller

 “No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.”
― Helen Keller

 “So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain.”
― Helen Keller

 “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.”
― Helen Keller

 “Change: A bend in the road is not the end of the road…Unless you fail to make the turn. ”
― Helen Keller

 “For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way. I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory. One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

 “The unselfish effort to bring cheer to others will be the beginning of a happier life for ourselves.”
― Helen Keller

 “I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower - the Light in my darkness, the Voice in my silence.”
― Helen Keller

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

 “Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything good in the world.”
― Helen Keller

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

 “Relationships are like Rome -- difficult to start out, incredible during the prosperity of the 'golden age', and unbearable during the fall. Then, a new kingdom will come along and the whole process will repeat itself until you come across a kingdom like Egypt... that thrives, and continues to flourish. This kingdom will become your best friend, your soul mate, and your love.”
― Helen Keller

 “Knowledge is love and light and vision.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

 “My friends have made the story of my life.”
― Helen Keller

 “Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into light.”
― Helen Keller

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

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

 “The one I felt and still feel most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of
some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts. One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures--solitude, books and imagination--outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches against a rainy day.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

 “Four things to learn in life: To think clearly without hurry or confusion; To love everybody sincerely; To act in everything with the highest motives; To trust God unhesitatingly.”
― Helen Keller

 “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.”
― Helen Keller

I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace. ”
― Helen Keller

 “Security is mostly a superstition. It 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 outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”
― Helen Keller, The Open Door

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

 “Alone we can do so little, But together we can do so much”
― Helen Keller

 “I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship.”
― Helen Keller

 “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going”
― Helen Keller

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

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

 “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.”
― Helen Keller

 “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.”
― Helen Keller

 “Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. ”
― Helen Keller

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

 “I had once believed that we were all masters of our fate--that we could mold our lives into any form we pleased... I had overcome deafness and blindness sufficiently to be happy, and I supposed that anyone could come out victorious if he threw himself valiantly into life's struggle. But as I went more and more about the country I learned that I had spoken with assurance on a subject I knew little about... I learned that the power to rise in the world is not within the reach of everyone.”
― Helen Keller

 “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.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

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

“We need limitations and temptations to open our inner selves, dispel our ignorance, tear off disguises, throw down old idols, and destroy false standards. Only by such rude awakenings can we be led to dwell in a place where we are less cramped, less hindered by the ever-insistent External. Only then do we discover a new capacity and appreciation of goodness and beauty and truth.”
― Helen Keller

 “One painful duty fulfilled makes the next plainer and easier.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

“There is no better way to thank God for your sight than by giving a helping hand to someone in the dark.”
― Helen Keller, LIGHT IN MY DARKNESS

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

 “Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain.”
― Helen Keller

 “Cut off as I am, it is inevitable that I should sometimes feel like a shadow walking in a shadowy world. When this happens I ask to be taken to New York City. Always I return home weary but I have the comforting certainty that mankind is real flesh and I myself am not a dream.”
― Helen Keller, Midstream: My Later Life

 “...our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

 “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. ”
― Helen Keller

 “I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.”
― Helen Keller

 “Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.”
― Helen Keller

 “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature... Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
― Helen Keller

 “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.”
― Helen Keller

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
― Helen Keller

“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. ”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

“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.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

 “I who am blind can give one hint to those who see: Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. And the same method can be applied to the other senses. Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again. make the most of every sense; glory in the beauty which the world in all the facets of pleasure reveals to you through the several means of contact which Nature provides. But of all the senses, I am sure that sight is the most delightful.”
― Helen Keller

 “Blindness separates people from things;
deafness separates people from people.”
― Helen Keller

 “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.”
― Helen Keller

 “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.”
― Helen Keller

“La vie est une aventure audacieuse ou alors elle n'est rien.”
― Helen Keller

 “you could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.”
― Helen Keller

 “The marvelous richness of human experience would lose
something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to
overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if
there were no dark valleys to traverse.”
― Helen Keller

 “True happines is not attained through self gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose”
― Helen Keller

 “I am beginning to suspect all elaborate & special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the suposition that every child is an idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself...”
― Helen Keller

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

 “Walkin in the dark with a friend is better than walking alone in the light.”
― Helen Keller

 “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows. It's what the sunflowers do.”
― Helen Keller

 “I believe in the immortality of the soul because I have within me immortal longings.”
― Helen Keller, To Love This Life: Quotations From Helen Keller

 “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all”
― Helen Keller

 “If you look up at the sun, you seldom see the shadows”
― Helen Keller

 “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.”
― Helen Keller

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

 “Great poetry needs no interpreter other than a responsive heart.”
― Helen Keller, story of my life: with her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of hereducation, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy

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

The best and most beautiful things in life cannot be seen or touched, but must felt by the heart.”
― Helen Keller

 “I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.”
― Helen Keller

 “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.”
― Helen Keller, The World I Live In

 “Your success and happiness lie in you.”
― Helen Keller

 “I began my studies with eagerness. Before me I saw a new world opening in beauty and light, and I felt within me the capacity to know all things. In the wonderland of Mind I should be as free as another [with sight and hearing]. Its people, scenery, manners, joys, and tragedies should be living tangible interpreters of the real world. The lecture halls seemed filled with the spirit of the great and wise, and I thought the professors were the embodiment of wisdom... But I soon discovered that college was not quite the romantic lyceum I had imagined. Many of the dreams that had delighted my young inexperience became beautifully less and "faded into the light of common day." Gradually I began to find that there were disadvantages in going to college. The one I felt and still feel most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts. One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures – solitude, books and imagination – outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches against a rainy day.”
― Helen Keller, story of my life: with her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of hereducation, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy

 “Many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves - and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either.”
― Helen Keller

 “Masculine exhalations are, as a rule, stronger, more vivid, more widely differentiated than those of women. In the odor of young men there is something elemental, as of fire, storm, and salt sea. It pulsates with buoyancy and desire. It suggests all the things strong and beautiful and joyous and gives me a sense of physical happiness.”
― Helen Keller

 “When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we took so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened up for us.”
― Helen Keller

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

 “The only lightless dark is the night of ingnorance and insensibility.”
― Helen Keller

 “We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world--the company of those who have known suffering.”
― Helen Keller

 “Many scholars forget, it seems to me, that our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding. The trouble is that very few of their laborious explanations stick in the memory. The mind drops them as a branch drops its overripe fruit. ... Again and again I ask impatiently, "Why concern myself with these explanations and hypotheses?" They fly hither and thither in my thought like blind birds beating the air with ineffectual wings. 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.”
― Helen Keller, story of my life: with her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of hereducation, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy

 “Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.”
― Helen Keller

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”
― Helen Keller, Optimism

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

 “The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands - the ownership and control of their livelihoods - are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.”
― Helen Keller, Rebel Lives: Helen Keller

 “Knowledge is power." Rather, knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge - broad, deep knowledge - is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low. To know the thoughts and deeds that have marked man's progress is to feel the great heart-throbs of humanity through the centuries; and if one does not feel in these pulsations a heavenward striving, one must indeed be deaf to the harmonies of life.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

 “The richness of the human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome.”
― Helen Keller

 “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!”
― Helen Keller, story of my life: with her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of hereducation, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy

 “If I regarded my life from the point of view of the pessimist, I should be undone. I should seek in vain for the light that does not visit my eyes and the music that does not ring in my ears. I should beg night and day and never be satisfied. I should sit apart in awful solitude, a prey to fear and despair. But since I consider it a duty to myself and to others to be happy, I escape a misery worse than any physical deprivation.”
― Helen Keller

 “But the examinations are the chief bugbears of my college life. Although I have faced them many times and cast them down and made them bite the dust, yet they rise again and menace me with pale looks, until like Bob Acres I feel my courage oozing out at my finger ends. The days before these ordeals take place are spent in cramming your mind with mystic formula and indigestible dates—unpalatable diets, until you wish that books and science and you were buried in the depths of the sea.

At last the dreaded hour arrives, and you are a favoured being indeed if you feel prepared, and are able at the right time to call to your standard thoughts that will aid you in that supreme effort. It happens too often that your trumpet call is unheeded. It is most perplexing and exasperating that just at the moment when you need your memory and a nice sense of discrimination, these faculties take to themselves wings and fly away. The facts you have garnered with such infinite trouble invariably fail you at a pinch.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

“Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than to outrun exposer. the fearful are caught as often as the bold.”
― Helen Keller

“It is a terrible thing to see and yet have no vision”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

“Thus I came up out of Egypt and stood before Sinai, and a power divine touched my spirit and gave it sight, so that I beheld many wonders. And from the sacred mountain I heard a voice which said, ‘Knowledge is love and light and vision.”
― Helen Keller

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.”
― Helen Keller

“On Power:
It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal.”
― Helen Keller

“They took away what should have been my eyes (but I remembered Milton's Paradise). They took away what should have been my ears, (Beethoven came and wiped away my tears) They took away what should have been my tongue, (but I had talked with god when I was young) He would not let them take away my soul, possessing that I still possess the whole.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

“i have heard of the stars, of the play of light on the waves
these i would like to see
but far more than sight
i wish for my ears to be opened
the voice of a friend
the imaginations of mozart
life without these is darker by far
than blindness”
― Helen Keller

 “It was my teacher's genius, her quick sympathy, her loving tact
which made the first years of my education so beautiful. It was
because she seized the right moment to impart knowledge that made
it so pleasant and acceptable to me. She realized that a child's
mind is like a shallow brook which ripples and dances merrily
over the stony course of its education and reflects here a
flower, there a bush, yonder a fleecy cloud; and she attempted to
guide my mind on its way, knowing that like a brook it should be
fed by mountain streams and hidden springs, until it broadened
out into a deep river, capable of reflecting in its placid
surface, billowy hills, the luminous shadows of trees and the
blue heavens, as well as the sweet face of a little flower.
Any teacher can take a child to the classroom, but not every
teacher can make him learn. He will not work joyously unless he
feels that liberty is his, whether he is busy or at rest; he must
feel the flush of victory and the heart-sinking of disappointment
before he takes with a will the tasks distasteful to him and
resolves to dance his way bravely through a dull routine of
textbooks.
My teacher is so near to me that I scarcely think of myself apart
from her. How much of my delight in all beautiful things is
innate, and how much is due to her influence, I can never tell. I
feel that her being is inseparable from my own, and that the
footsteps of my life are in hers. All the best of me belongs to
her--there is not a talent, or an aspiration or a joy in me that
has not been awakened by her loving touch.”
― Helen Keller, story of my life: with her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of hereducation, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy

“People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.”
― Helen Keller

“There are times when I long to sweep away half the things I am expected to learn; for the overtaxed mind cannot enjoy the treasure it has secured at the greatest cost. ... 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. At the present time my mind is so full of heterogeneous matter that I almost despair of ever being able to put it in order. Whenever I enter the region of my mind I feel like the proverbial bull in the china shop. A thousand odds and ends of knowledge come crashing about my head like hailstones, and when I try to escape them, theme goblins and college nixies of all sorts pursue me, until I wish – oh, may I be forgiven the wicked wish! – that I might smash the idols I came to worship.”
― Helen Keller, story of my life: with her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of hereducation, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy

“In a word, 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.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

“Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.”
― Helen Keller

“The best and most beautiful things in the world can not be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.”
― Helen Keller

“There are moments when I feel that the Shylocks, the Judases, and even the Devil are broken spokes in the great wheel of good which shall in due time be mad whole.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

“Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.”
― Helen Keller