A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.
—Helen Keller
Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession.
—Helen Keller
We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond the senses.
—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
Topics: Education
Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another’s pain, life is not in vain.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Kindness, Giving, Service
Not the senses I have but what I do with them is my kingdom.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Success, Success & Failure
What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self.
—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
Topics: Books, Literature
It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Vision, Prophecy
No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an unchartered land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Pessimism
Your success and happiness lie within you. External conditions are the accidents of life, its outer trappings.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Success, Joy
A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.
—Helen Keller
Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Faith, Light
To think clearly without hurry or confusion; To love everybody sincerely; To act in everything with the highest motives; To trust God unhesitatingly.
—Helen Keller
The highest result of education is tolerance. Long ago men fought and died for their faith; but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage,—the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren and their rights of conscience. Tolerance is the first principal of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Tolerance
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Living Well, Spirit
Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Contentment, Happiness
Relationships are like Rome. Difficult to start out, incredible during the prosperity of the ‘Golden Age’, and unbearable during the fall. Then, a new kingdom will come along and the whole process will repeat itself until you come across a kingdom like Egypt…that thrives, and continues to flourish. This kingdom will become your best friend, your soulmate, and your love.
—Helen Keller
One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
—Helen Keller
The chief duty I long to accomplish great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Doing Your Best, Teamwork, Acceptance, Expectations, Time Management, Action, Things, One Step at a Time, Realization, Awareness, Value of Time, Helping, Realistic Expectations, Work, Little Things, Accomplishment
We have found that our great philosophers and our great men of action are optimists. So, too, our most potent men of letters have been optimists in their books and in their lives. No pessimist ever won an audience commensurately wide with his genius.
—Helen Keller
Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight… When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Effort, Doing Your Best, Excellence, Patience
Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across thousands of miles and all the years we have lived.
—Helen Keller
Self-pity is our worst enemy, and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Self-Pity, Hedonism, Self-Discovery
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Romance, Heart, Living, Beauty, Feelings
Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas.
—Helen Keller
Literature is my utopia.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Literature
What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes part of us.
—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
Topics: Youth
Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the worlds at a standstill. Pessimism kills the instinct that urges men to struggle against poverty, ignorance and crime, and dries up all the fountains of joy in the world.
—Helen Keller
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Jane Addams American Social Reformer
- Jeannette Rankin American Politician
- Ernest Hemingway American Author
- Caroline Kennedy American Attorney, Diplomat
- Washington Irving American Author
- William F. Buckley, Jr. American Conservative Editor
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman American Feminist, Writer
- Peter McWilliams American Author
- Bill Bryson American Humorist
- Robert Fulghum American Unitarian Universalist Author
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