Helen Keller
Once it was necessary that the people should multiply and be fruitful if the race was to survive. But now to preserve the race it is necessary that people hold back the power of propagation.Collection: Race
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.Collection: Running
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.Collection: Inspirational
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. Others there are whose hands have sunbeams in them, so that their grasp warms my heart. It may be only the clinging touch of a child's hand; but there is as much potential sunshine in it for me as there is in a loving glance for others. A hearty handshake or a friendly letter gives me genuine pleasure.Collection: Children
Museums and art stores are also sources of pleasure and inspiration. Doubtless it will seem strange to many that the hand unaided by sight can feel action, sentiment, beauty in the cold marble; and yet it is true that I derive genuine pleasure from touching great works of art. As my finger tips trace line and curve, they discover the thought and emotion which the artist has portrayed.Collection: Beauty
Long before I learned to do a sum in arithmetic or describe the shape of the earth, Miss Sullivan had taught me to find beauty in the fragrant woods, in every blade of grass, and in the curves and dimples of my baby sister's hand.Collection: Baby
I know no study that will take you nearer the way to happiness than the study of nature - and I include in the study of nature not only things and their forces, but also mankind and their ways, and the moulding of the affections and the will into an earnest desire not only to be happy, but to create happiness.Collection: Nature
Ruth is so loyal and gentle-hearted, we cannot help loving her, as she stands with the reapers amid the waving corn. Her beautiful, unselfish spirit shines out like a bright star in the night of a dark and cruel age. Love like Ruth's, love which can rise above conflicting creeds and deep-seated racial prejudices, is hard to find in all the world.Collection: Life
The one resolution, which was in my mind long before it took the form of a resolution, is the key-note of my life. It is this, always to regard as mere impertinences of fate the handicaps which were placed upon my life almost at the beginning. I resolved that they should not crush or dwarf my soul, but rather be made to blossom, like Aaron's rod, with flowers.Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Eye
The unselfish effort to bring cheer to others will be the beginning of a happier life for ourselves.Collection: Teacher
What really counts in life is the quiet meeting of every difficulty with the determination to get out of it all the good there is.Collection: Determination
Do not think of to-day's failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow.Collection: Cheer
I, who have never heard a sound, tell you there is no silence, and I, who have never seen a ray of light, tell you there is no darkness.Collection: Light
A smile goes a long way, but you must first start it on its journey.Collection: Smile
We can decide to let our trials crush us, or we can convert them to new forces of good.Collection: Crush
Great poetry needs no interpreter other than a responsive heart.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Littles
What do I consider a teacher should be? One who breathes life into knowledge so that it takes new form in progress and civilization.Collection: Teacher
To be blind is bad, but worse is to have eyes and not see.Collection: Success
If I write what my soul thinks it will be visible, and the words will be its body.Collection: Writing
When all you can feel are the shadows, turn your face towards the sun. There is always a bright side - even if only that it is not worse...and it can always be worseCollection: Gratitude
Education should train the child to use his brains, to make for himself a place in the world and maintain his rights even when it seems that society would shove him into the scrap-heap.Collection: Children
Defeat is simply a signal to press onward.Collection: Life
My friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges.Collection: Friendship
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.Collection: Freedom
Blindness separates us from things but deafness separates us from people.Collection: Loss
True teaching cannot be learned from text-books any more than a surgeon can acquire his skill by reading about surgery.Collection: Teaching
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.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Education
When one doors closes, another door opens.Collection: Doors
Every child has a right to be well-born, well-nurtured and well-taught, and only the freedom of woman can guarantee him this right.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Country
Optimism, then, is a fact within my own heart. But as I look out upon life, my heart meets no contradiction. The outward world justifies my inward universe of good.Collection: Heart
No nation is wise enough to rule another.Collection: Wise
I do not remember a time since I have been capable of loving books that I have not loved Shakespeare.Collection: Book
A good education is a stepping-stone to wealth.Collection: Education
For years to come the debris of a convulsed world will beset our steps. It will require a purpose stronger than any man and worthy of all men to calm and inspirit us. A sane society whose riches are happy children, men and women, beautiful with peace and creative activity, is not going to be ordained for us. We must make it ourselves.Collection: Beautiful
Our worst foes are not belligerent circumstances, but wavering spirits.Collection: Courage
I prefer to stroll which has a buddy at nighttime, than by itself inside the light.Collection: Light
In times of danger large groups rise to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, courage and sacrifice . . . Mankind will be refashioned and history rewritten when this law is understood and obeyed.Collection: Inspirational
The wise fools who sit in the high places of justice fail to see that in revolutionary times vital issues are settled not by statutes, decrees and authorities, but in spite if them.Collection: Wise
I, who cannot see, find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I feel the delicate symmetry of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly about the smooth skin of a silver birch, or the rough shaggy bark of a pine.Collection: Taken
Now, however, I see the folly of attempting to hitch one's wagon to a star with a harness that does not belong to it.Collection: Stars
I hung about the dangerous frontier of "guess," avoiding with infinite trouble to myself and others the broad valley of reason.Collection: Valleys
It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life.Collection: Writing
Let pessimism once take hold of the mind, and life is all topsy-turvy, all vanity and vexation of spirit. There is no cure for individual or social disorder, except in forgetfulness and annihilation.Collection: Vanity
Usually they are quick to discover that I cannot see or hear.... It is not training but love which impels them to break their silence about me with the thud of a tail rippling against my chair on gambols round the study, or news conveyed by expressive ear, nose, and paw. Often I yearn to give them speech, their motions are so eloquent with things they cannot say.Collection: Dog