Quotes by Helen Keller


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

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
– Helen Keller
Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction!
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
– Helen Keller
Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
It gives me a deep comforting sense that things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.
– Helen Keller
It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.
– Helen Keller
Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.
– Helen Keller
Knowledge is love and light and vision.
– Helen Keller
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
– Helen Keller
Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.
– Helen Keller
Life is either a great adventure or nothing.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
My darkness has been filled with the light of intelligence, and behold, the outer day-lit world was stumbling and groping in social blindness.
– Helen Keller
My share of the work may be limited, but the fact that it is work makes it precious.
– Helen Keller
Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.
– Helen Keller
No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.
– Helen Keller
Now is the time for all good men to come to.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.
– Helen Keller
Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.
– Helen Keller
Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!
– Helen Keller
The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.
– Helen Keller
What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self.
– Helen Keller
What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.
– Helen Keller
I sometimes wonder if the hand is not more sensitive to the beauties of sculpture than the eye. I should think the wonderful rhythmical flow of lines and curves could be more subtly felt than seen. Be this as it may, I know that I can feel the heart-throbs of the ancient Greeks in their marble gods and goddesses.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
– Helen Keller
People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.
– Helen Keller
Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything good in the world.
– Helen Keller
We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.
– Helen Keller
Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
– Helen Keller
When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.
– Helen Keller
Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.
– Helen Keller
True happiness... is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
– Helen Keller
The highest result of education is tolerance.
– Helen Keller
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.
– Helen Keller
So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.
– Helen Keller
Alone we can do so little together we can do so much.
– Helen Keller