HKHelen Keller

158 collected words

Helen Keller

Dates not recorded

Personal byline in the 1911 Optimist anthology. Basic source-backed attribution identity; lifetime and independent authorship verification not established here.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

The most pathetic person in the world is some one who has sight but no vision.

Helen Keller / quote

02Undated

Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee...

Helen Keller / quote

03Undated

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

Helen Keller / quote

04Undated

It is beyond a doubt that everyone should have time for some special delight, if only five minutes each day to seek out a lovely flower or cloud or star, or learn a verse to brighten another’s dull task. What is the use of such terrible diligence as many tire themselves out with, if they always postpone their exchanges of smiles with Beauty and Joy to cling to irksome duties and relations?

Helen Keller / quote

05Undated

I have an unshakable belief that mankind’s higher nature is on the whole still dormant. The greatest souls reveal excellencies of mind and heart which their lesser fellows possess-hidden, it is true, but there all the same.

Helen Keller / quote

06Undated

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

Helen Keller / quote

07Undated

As selfishness and complaint pervert and cloud the mind, so sex with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.

Helen Keller / quote

08Undated

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

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09Undated

There is joy in self-forgetfulness. So I try to make the light in others' eyes my sun, the music in others' ears my symphony, the smile on others' lips my happiness.

Helen Keller / quote

10Undated

For years to come the debris of a convulsed world will beset our steps. It will require a purpose stronger than any man and worthy of all men to calm and inspirit us. A sane society whose riches are happy children, men and women, beautiful with peace and creative activity, is not going to be ordained for us. We must make it ourselves.

Helen Keller / quote

11Undated

We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world--the company of those who have known suffering.

Helen Keller / quote

12Undated

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

Helen Keller / quote

13Undated

What is so sweet as to awake from a troubled dream and behold a beloved face smiling upon you? I love to believe that such shall be our awakening from earth to heaven. My faith never wavers that each dear friend I have “lost” is a new link between this world and the happier land beyond the morn. My soul is for the moment bowed down with grief when I cease to feel the touch of their hands or hear a tender word from them; but the light of faith never fades from the sky, and I take heart again, glad they are free. I cannot understand why anyone should fear death…Suppose there are a million chances against that one that my loved ones who have gone on are alive. What of it? I will take that one chance and risk mistake, rather than let any doubts sadden their souls, and find out afterward. Since there is that one chance of immortality, I will endeavor not to cast a shadow on the joy of the departed…Certainly it is one of our sweetest experiences that when we are touched by some noble affection or pure joy, we remember the dead most tenderly, and feel more powerfully drawn to them.

Helen Keller / quote

14Undated

If there were no life beyond this earth-life, some people I have known would gain immortality by the nobility of our memory of them. With every friend I love who has been taken into the brown bosom of the earth a part of me has been buried there; but their contribution of happiness, strength, and understanding to my being remains to sustain me in an altered world.

Helen Keller / quote

15Undated

The bulk of the world's knowledge is an imaginary construction.

Helen Keller / quote

16Undated

Masculine exhalations are, as a rule, stronger, more vivid,more widely differentiated than those of women. In the odor of young men there is something elemental, as of fire, storm, and salt sea. It pulsates with buoyancy and desire. It suggests all the things strong and beautiful and joyous and gives me a sense of physical happiness.

Helen Keller / quote

17Undated

I who am blind can give one hint to those who see: Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. And the same method can be applied to the other senses. Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again. make the most of every sense; glory in the beauty which the world in all the facets of pleasure reveals to you through the several means of contact which Nature provides. But of all the senses, I am sure that sight is the most delightful.

Helen Keller / quote

18Undated

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

Helen Keller / quote

19Undated

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.

Helen Keller / quote

20Undated

What does this beauty or than music mean to you? You cannot see the waves rolling up the beach or hear their roar. What do they mean to you?' In the most evident sense they mean everything. I cannot fathom or define their meaning any more than I can fathom or define love or religion or goodness.

Helen Keller / quote

21Undated

Sometimes, it is true, a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist as I sit alone and wait at life’s shut gate. Beyond there is light, and music, and sweet companionship; but I may not enter. Fate, silent, pitiless, bars the way…Silence sits immense upon my soul. Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, ‘there is joy is self-forgetfulness.’ So I try to make the light in others’ eyes my sun, the music in others; ears my symphony, the smile on others’ lips my happiness.

Helen Keller / quote

22Undated

Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free.

Helen Keller / quote

23Undated

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.

Helen Keller / quote

24Undated

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 / quote