Quotes from Helen Keller

I read from Mark Twain's lips one or two of his good stories. He has his own way of thinking, saying and doing everything. I feel the twinkle of his eye in his handshake. Even while he utters his cynical wisdom in an indescribably droll voice, he makes you feel that his heart is a tender Iliad of human sympathy.

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

Great poetry, whether written in Greek or in English, needs no other interpreter than a responsive heart.

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.

If you can dream it, you can do it.

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

Be happy with what you have while working for what you want.

La vie est une aventure audacieuse ou alors elle n'est rien.

In a word, literature is my utopia.

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.

Believe. No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted island, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.

Look the world straight in the eye.

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

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 world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

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

True happines is not attained through self gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose

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

Certainly I believe that God gave us life for happiness, not misery. Humanity, I am sure, will never be made lazy or indifferent by an excess of happiness. 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. Happiness should be a means of accomplishment, like health, not an end in itself.

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate & special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the suposition that every child is an idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself...

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 the one which has opened for us.

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

Good friends walk in when the old ones walk out.

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.

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.