Helen Keller Quotes (124 Quotes)

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.

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.

For one wild, glad moment we snapped the chain that bind us to earth, and joining hands with the winds we felt ourselves divine.

Great poetry needs no interpreter other than a responsive heart.

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 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.

It is so pleasant to learn about new things. Every day I find how little I know, but I do not feel discouraged since God has given me an eternity in which to learn more.

One painful duty fulfilled makes the next plainer and easier.

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.

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.

When one door of happiness closes, another opens.

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

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.

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

The hands of those I meet are dumbly eloquent to me. The touch of some hands is an impertinence. I have met people so empty of joy, that when I clasped their frosty finger-tips, it seemed as if I were shaking hands with a northeast storm.

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

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

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.

Character is like the fire within the flint-latent until it is struck out of the stone. Observing the flint stone, who would think it contained the possibility of light And so it is with the dark experiences of life. And it is only us, individually, that decide what that darkness is, even without quite knowing the reasons for its being. And then we must learn to let light enter. When they are met with courage, they give out sparks of spiritual light.

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

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.

Every modern war has had its root in exploitation ... The Civil War was fought to decide whether the slaveholders of the South or the capitalists of the North should exploit the West. The Spanish-American War decided that the United States should exploit Cuba and the Philippines. The South African War decided that the British should exploit the diamond mines. The Russo-Japanese War decided that Japan should exploit Korea. The present war is to decide who shall exploit the Balkans, Turkey, Persia, Egypt, India, China, Africa. And we are whetting our sword to scare the victors into sharing the spoils with us. Now, the workers are not interested in the spoils they will not get any of them anyway.

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

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

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

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

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

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

We can decide to let our trials crush us, or we can convert them to new forces of good

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

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

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

The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor

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

College isn't the place to go for ideas.

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.

We cannot freely and wisely choose the right way for ourselves unless we know both good and evil.

I am just as deaf as I am blind. 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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves.

Resolve to keep happy, and your joy shall form an invincible host against difficulty.

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

I have always thought it would be a blessing if each person could be blind and deaf for a few days during his early adult life. Darkness would make him appreciate sight silence would teach him the joys of sound.