Helen Keller Quotes

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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 love and light and vision.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Life is either a great adventure or nothing.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

The highest result of education is tolerance.

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.

College isn’t the place to go for ideas.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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