Quotes from Helen Keller

My favorite quote: Life's a daring adventure, or nothing. —Helen Keller, who lived life to the fullest, despite the most challenging of handicaps.

Once, when I was puzzled to know why there were so many religions, he said: "There is one universal religion, Helen — the religion of love. Love your Heavenly Father with your whole heart and soul, love every child of God as much as ever you can, and remember that the possibilities of good are greater than the possibilities of evil; and you have the key to Heaven.

A man must understand evil and be acquainted with sorrow before he can write himself an optimist and expect others to believe that he has reason for the faith that is in him.

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot be in the shadows

As my college days draw to a close, I find myself looking forward with beating heart and bright anticipations to what the future holds of activity for me. My share in the work of the world may be limited; but the fact that it is work makes it precious. Nay, the desire and will to work is optimism itself.

First they ask me to tell the life of the child who is mother to the woman. Then they make me my own daughter and ask for an account of grown-up sensations. Finally I am requested to write about my dreams, and thus I become an anachronical grandmother; for it is the special privilege of old age to relate dreams.

until they give me opportunity to write about matters that are not-me, the world must go on uninstructed and unreformed, and I can only do my best with the one small subject upon which I am allowed to discourse.

I read them in the intervals between study and play with an ever-deepening sense of pleasure. I did not study nor analyze them—I did not know whether they were well written or not; I never thought about style or authorship. They laid their treasures at my feet, and I accepted them as we accept the sunshine and the love of our friends.

History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them.

It is by fighting the limitations, temptations, and failures of the world that we reach our highest possibilities.

The hand is defined as "the organ of apprehension." How perfectly the definition fits my case in both senses of the word "apprehend"! With my hand I seize and hold all that I find in the three worlds—physical, intellectual, and spiritual.

but I didn't dream that, that interview would be the door through which I should pass from darkness into light, from isolation to friendship, companionship, knowledge, love.

A tangible object passes complete into my brain with the warmth of life upon it, and occupies the same place that it does in space; for, without egotism, the mind is as large as the universe.

Life is a daring adventure or nothing.

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.

So imagination crowns the experience of my hands. And they learned their cunning from the wise hand of another, which, itself guided by imagination, led me safely in paths that I knew not, made darkness light before me, and made crooked ways straight.

What would be worse than being born blind? She replied, To have sight without vision.

I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts.

there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his. My

The day is ours, and what the day has shown.

I was rather unwilling to study Latin grammar. It seemed absurd to waste time analyzing, every word I came across—noun, genitive, singular, feminine—when its meaning was quite plain. I thought I might just as well describe my pet in order to know it—order, vertebrate; division, quadruped; class, mammalia; genus, felinus; species, cat; individual, Tabby.

T he test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life.

Life is either a great adventure or nothing.

Industry rests on the iron law of economic determination. All history reveals that economic interests are the strongest ties that bind men together. That is not because men's hearts are evil & selfish. It is only a result of the inexorable law of life. The desire to live is the basic principle that compels men & women to seek a more suitable environment, so that they may live better & more happily.