Helen Keller Quotes

If we do not like our work, and do not try to get happiness out of it, we are a menace to our profession as well as to ourselves.

I have found out that though the ways in which I can make myself useful are few, yet the work open to me is endless.

I feel the delightful, velvety texture of a flower, and discover its remarkable convolutions; and something of the miracle of Nature is revealed to me.

The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life. If it be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, then it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy.

I fall, I stand still... I trudge on. I gain a little... I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory.

He who marries the spirit of the age soon becomes a widower.

If it is true that the violin is the most perfect of musical instruments, then Greek is the violin of human thought.

My friends have made the story of my life.

I can see in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden.

Your success and happiness lie in you.

The best educated human being is the one who understands most about the life in which he is placed.

I will not just live my life. I will not just spend my life. I will invest my life.

Fear: the best way out is through.

I am thankful that in a troubled world no calamity can prevent the return of spring.

Burn brightly without burning out. Throw your heart over the fense and the rest will follow. Keep your face to the sunshine and you wont see the shadows

I have never believed that my limitations were in any sense punishments or accidents. If I had held such a view, I could never have expected the strength to overcome them.

There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference.

A smile goes a long way, but you must first start it on its journey.

History is a record of the incessant struggle of humanity against ignorance and oppression.

Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.

The beginning of my life was simple and much like every other little life. I came, I saw, I conquered, as the first baby in the family always does.

The civilization of a state should be measured by the amount of suffering it prevents and the degree of happiness it makes possible for its citizens.

It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster. There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference.

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

The joy of surmounting obstacles which once seemed unremovable, and pushing the frontier of accomplishment further — what joy is there like unto it?

Few pleasures there are indeed without an aftertouch of pain, but that is the preservation which keeps them sweet.

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

Touch each object as if tomorrow you would never be able to feel anything again.

Make the most of every sense; glory in all the facets of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you...

The chief handicap of the blind is not blindness, but the attitude of seeing people towards them.

Oh, you think the darkness is your ally, but you merely adopted the dark. I was born in it. Molded by it.

THE most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me

Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.

I do not like the world as it is; so I am trying to make it a little more as I want it.

Life is an adventure or nothing

Be happy. Talk happiness.

When indeed shall we learn that we are all related one to the other, that we are all members of one body?

I, for one, love strength, daring, fortitude. I do not want people to kill the fight in them; I want them to fight for right things.

Not the senses I have but what I do with them is my kingdom.

It is not possible to refer a complex difficulty to a single cause.

To get Congress to do anything.

The few who profit from the labor of the masses want to organize the workers into an army which will protect the interests of the capitalists.

Good friends walk in when the old ones walk out.

What is the use of such terrible diligence as many tire themselves out with, if they always postpone their exchange of smiles with Beauty and Joy to cling to irksome duties and relations?

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.

I regard philanthropy as a tragic apology for wrong conditions under which human beings live.

What induces a child to learn but his delight in knowing?

When one comes to think of it, there are no such things as divine, immutable, or inalienable rights. Rights are things we get when we are strong enough to make good our claim on them.

I have made my limitations tools of learning and true joy.

Serious harm, I am afraid, has been wrought to our generation by fostering the idea that they would live secure in a permanent order of things.