Helen Keller Quotes

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

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.

Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.

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 highest result of education is tolerance.

People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.

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.

What I'm looking for is not out there, it is in me.

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.

Literature is my Utopia

Happiness does not come from without, it comes from within

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

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.

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

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

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.

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.

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.

Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.

Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

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.

There is no better way to thank God for your sight than by giving a helping hand to someone in the dark.

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.

We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.

The unselfish effort to bring cheer to others will be the beginning of a happier life for ourselves.

Knowledge is love and light and vision.

The struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings. It makes us patient, sensitive, and Godlike. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

College isn't the place to go for ideas.

Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.

I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.

To keep our faces toward chance and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.

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.

I thank God for my handicaps. For through them, I have found myself, my work and my God.

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.

Do not think of todays failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow.

It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.

Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other's welfare, social justice can never be attained.

While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.

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

As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.

A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.

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.

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.

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.

Once I knew only darkness and stillness... my life was without past or future... 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.

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 happiness... is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

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.

So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.

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

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

All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.

I believe in the immortality of the soul because I have within me immortal longings.

What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self.

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.

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.

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.

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

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

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 no way of knowing how near the harbor was. 'Light Give me light' was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour.

Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.

Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.

It is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while.

I sometimes wonder if the hand is not more sensitive to the beauties of sculpture than the eye. I should think the wonderful rhythmical flow of lines and curves could be more subtly felt than seen. Be this as it may, I know that I can feel the heart-throbs of the ancient Greeks in their marble gods and goddesses.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

This world is so full of care and sorrow that it is a gracious debt we owe to one another to discover the bright crystals of delight hidden in somber circumstances and irksome tasks.

If it is true that the violin is the most perfect of musical instruments, then Greek is the violin of human thought.

It gives me a deep comforting sense that Things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.

The welfare of each is bound up in the welfare of all.

Doubts and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.

God himself is not secure, having given man dominion over his work.

Not the senses I have but what I do with them is my kingdom.

It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance it allotted length.

The only real blind person at Christmas time is he who has not Christmas in his heart.

My darkness has been filled with the light of intelligence, and behold, the outer day-lit world was stumbling and groping in social blindness.

The best educated human being is the one who understands most about the life in which he is placed.

My share of the work may be limited, but the fact that it is work makes it precious.

It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.

There is plenty of courage among us for the abstract, but not for the concrete.

The million little things that drop into your hands, The small opportunities each day brings, He leaves us free to use or abuse, And goes unchanging along His silent way

I look upon the whole world as my fatherland, and every war has to me the horror of a family feud.

A man can't make a place for himself in the sun if he keeps taking refuge under the family tree.