Famous Women Quotes
The Best Helen Keller Quotes
Helen Keller quotes are inspiring, uplifting and profound. In this huge collection of quotes by this amazing woman you will find topics such as quotes about overcoming adversity, quotes on God, quotes on love and friendship, quotes on education and other inspiring quotes.
Helen Keller Quotes
Helen Keller quotes about overcoming adversity
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therin to be content
Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.
What really counts in life is the quiet meeting of every difficulty with determination to get out of it all the good there is.
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.
One painful duty fulfilled makes the next plainer and easier
We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world–the company of those who have known suffering
I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship
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.
I never fight, except against difficulties.
A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships
~ Helen Keller quotes
Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight
The best way out is always through
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.
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.
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.
~ Helen Keller quotes about overcoming adversity
Helen Keller quotes about being blind and deaf
Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful
~ Helen Keller quotes
Blindness separates people from things;deafness separates people from people
There is no better way to thank God for your sight than by giving a helping hand to someone in the dark
Every one of us is blind and deaf until our eyes are opened to our fellowmen, until our ears hear the voices of humanity.
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
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.
So much has been given to me I have not time to ponder over that which has been denied
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.
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.
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.
It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.
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
What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self.
~ Helen Keller quotes on being deaf and blind
Helen Keller quotes about love and friendship
What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.
~ Helen Keller quotes
So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.
Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light
The best and most beautiful thing in life is friendship that springs out of the heart, as fragrances out of the flower.
Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.
My friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges, and enabled me to walk serene and happy in the shadow cast by my deprivation.
~ Helen Keller quotes about love and fiendship
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
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 quotes on love and friendship
Inspirational Helen Keller quotes
I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.
~ Helen Keller quotes
What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.
Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.
There are no shortcuts to any place worth going
Never bend your head. Hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.
Change: A bend in the road is not the end of the road…Unless you fail to make the turn.
One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
To keep our faces toward change, and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate, is strength undefeatable.
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.
While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt within the heart.
~ Inspirational Helen Keller quotes
There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.
Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.
We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.
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.
When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.
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.
~ Inspirational Helen Keller quotes
Helen Keller Quotes on God and Faith
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 quotes
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.
Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.
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.
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.
God Himself is not secure, having given man dominion over His work.
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.
Discouraged not by difficulties without, or the anguish of ages within, the heart listens to a secret voice that whispers: “Be not dismayed; in the future lies the Promised Land
~ Helen Keller quotes on God and faith
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.
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
I thank God for my handicaps for, through them, I have found myself, my work, and my God.
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
I believe that life is given us so that we may grow in love, and I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the color and fragrance of a flower
There is much in the Bible against which every instinct of my being rebels, so much that I regret the necessity which has compelled me to read it through from beginning to end. I do not think that the knowledge which I have gained of its history and sources compensates me for the unpleasant details it has forced upon my attention.
~ Helen Keller quotes on God and faith
Helen Keller quotes on education and literature
College isn’t the place to go for ideas.
~ Helen Keller quotes
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.
The highest result of education is tolerance.
The world is sown with good; but unless I turn my glad thoughts into practical living and till my own field, I can not reap a kernel of good.
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
I am beginning to suspect all elaborate & special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition 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.
…our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding
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 quotes on education
More than at any other time, when I hold a beloved book in my hand my limitations fall from me, my spirit is free.
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 rhe light of love shone on me in that very hour.
Knowledge is love and light and vision.
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.
What induces a child to learn but his delight in knowing?
A child must feel the flush of victory and the heart-sinking of disappointment before he takes with a will to the tasks distasteful to him and resolves to dance his way through a dull routine of textbooks.
~ Helen Keller quotes on education and literature
Read more quotes about education
Other Great Helen Keller quotes
I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
~ Helen Keller quotes
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.
Some people are foolish enough to imagine that wealth and power and fame satisfy our hearts; but they never do, unless they are used to create and distribute happiness in the world.
No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.
Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything good in the world.
Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousand of miles and all the years you have lived.
Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!
To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.
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.
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.
The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature…. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.
As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.
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.
I have often been asked, “Do not people bore you?” I do not understand quite what that means. I suppose the calls of the stupid and curious, especially of newspaper reporters, are always inopportune. I also dislike people who try to talk down to my understanding. They are like people who when walking with you try to shorten their steps to suit yours; the hypocrisy in both cases is equally exasperating.
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.
It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.
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.
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.
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 quotes
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.
My share of the work may be limited, but the fact that it is work makes it precious.
No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.
Doubts and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.
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
Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.
There is plenty of courage among us for the abstract, but not for the concrete.
The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
Our democracy is but a name. We vote. What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real — though not avowed — autocrats. We choose between ‘Tweedledum’ and ‘Tweedledee’.
I believe in the immortality of the soul because I have within me immortal longings.
It gives me a deep, comforting sense that things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal
When indeed shall we learn that we are all related one to the other, that we are all members of one body?
The unselfish effort to bring cheer to others will be the beginning of a happier life for ourselves
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
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
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 quotes
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
I rejoice to live in such a splendidly disturbing time
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
The most beautiful world is always entered through imagination
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
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood
I really care for nothing in the world but liberty in all the departments of life – liberty to grow mentally and spiritually, untrampled by tradition and arbitrary standards.
It is not required of every man and woman to do or be something great. Most of us have to be content to take small parts in the drama of life.
It is said that success is happiness. I think good-will and service to all men are the true kind of happiness.
Unless we can help the world where we are, we could not help it if we were somewhere else.
Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.
Great poetry needs no interpreter other than a responsive heart
The only lightless dark is the night of ignorance and insensibility
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
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.
Look the world straight in the eye
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
Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the world at a standstill.
Happiness is a state of mind, and depends very little on outward circumstances. Cultivate happiness in yourself and in others, and you will wonder at the beauty, the richness, the power that come from you through your bright spirit.
~ Helen Keller quotes
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