Helen Keller Quotations

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

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.

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

Life is either a great adventure or nothing.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived. The odors of fruits waft me to my southern home, to my childhood frolics in the peach orchard. Other odors, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening fields far away.

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.

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.

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

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

We may have found a cure for most evils; but we have found no remedy for the worst of them all, the apathy of human beings.

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

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.

Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.

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.

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.

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

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

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

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

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.

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

Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!

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

Although the world is full of suffering,it is also full of the overcoming of it.

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

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.

College isn't the place to go for ideas.

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.

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.

One can never consent to creep when one feels the compulsion to soar.

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

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.

So long as I confine my activities to social services and the blind, the newspapers compliment me extravagantly, calling me an 'arch-priest of the sightless' and 'wonder woman'. But when I discuss poverty and the industrial system under which we live that is a different matter.

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.

''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 heartthrobs 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.

Knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge -- broad, deep knowledge -- is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low.

I can feel the twinkle of his eye in his handshake.

I don't want peace that passeth understanding, I want understanding which bringeth peace.

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.

We 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.

Keep your face to the sunshine and you will never see the shadow.

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

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

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

Happiness is like the mountain summit. It is sometimes hidden by clouds, but we know it is there.

Even if you have a problem, you don't need to be one.

When one door closes, another opens. But we often look so regretfully upon the closed door that we don't see the one that has opened for us.

When one door of happiness closes, another opens.

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 opened for us

When one door to happiness closes, another opens. But often we look so long at the closed door we do not see the one which has been opened to us.

To think clearly without hurry or confusion; To love everybody sincerely; To act in everything with the highest motives; To trust God unhesitatingly.

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

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

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

Fact and fancy look alike across the years that link the past with the present.

I'm not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.

No loss by flood and lightening, no destruction of cities and temples by the hostile forces of nature, has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his intolerance has destroyed

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched ... but are felt in the heart.