Helen Keller (1880–1968) was an American author, political activist, and educator. She was the first deaf and blind person to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Her legacy is one of resilience and steadfast courage, whereas her aid organization, Helen Keller International (est.1915,) remains active across the world.
Born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, Keller lost sight and hearing due to scarlet fever or meningitis when she was 20 months old. At age 7, she met her life-long teacher and companion, Anne Sullivan, who was 20 years old and herself blind. With Sullivan’s tutelage, Helen learned to communicate and pursue formal education.
Keller went to the Perkins Institute, then to a preparatory school, and then to Radcliffe College. Keller and Sullivan made the rounds on the lecture circuit, raising money for blind soldiers returning home from World War I. They went to Hollywood, where Keller starred in a movie about herself. Keller went on to become a famous speaker and author, political and social activist, and advocate for people with disabilities, women’s suffrage, and racial equality in America.
Keller’s truly inspirational autobiographical account, The Story Of My Life (1903,) narrates how she communicated with others and her experiences of discovering the beauty of nature and the ways of the world.
The story of Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller has been depicted in William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker (1956,) originally a television play and later a Broadway play (1959) and a film (1962.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Helen Keller
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through the experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
—Helen Keller
One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
—Helen Keller
Defeat is simply a signal to press onward.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Perseverance
This world is so full of care and sorrow that it is a gracious debt we owe to one another to discover the bright crystals of delight hidden in somber circumstances and irksome tasks.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Sorrow
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
It is curious to observe what different ideals of happiness people cherish, and in what singular places they look for this well-spring of their life. Many look for it in the hoarding of riches, some in the pride of power, and others in the achievements of art and literature; a few seek it in the exploration of their own minds, or in search for knowledge.
—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
We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Patience, Sorrow, Optimism
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: Realistic Expectations, Time Management, Helping, Awareness, Action, Value of Time, Acceptance, One Step at a Time, Work, Realization, Accomplishment, Doing Your Best
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.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Happiness, Aspirations, Goals, Meaning, Purpose, Wisdom
Happiness is the final and perfect fruit of obedience to the laws of life.
—Helen Keller
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
As selfishness and complaint pervert and cloud the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Vision, Religion, Sex, Selfishness
It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster. There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference.
—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
Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Suffering, Courage
It all comes to this: the simplest way to be happy is to do good.
—Helen Keller
A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.
—Helen Keller
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
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Security, Life, Persistence, Risk-taking, Idleness, Risk, Danger, Action, Living
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
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: Service, Giving, Kindness
Who shall dare let his incapacity for hope or goodness cast a shadow upon the courage of those who bear their burdens as if they were privileges?
—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
Topics: Risk, Danger, Security
I have found out that though the ways in which I can make myself useful are few, yet the work open to me is endless.
—Helen Keller
Optimism is the harmony between man’s spirit and of God pronouncing His works good.
—Helen Keller
Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.
—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
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.
—Helen Keller
No effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost. Sometime, somewhere, somehow we shall find that which we seek.
—Helen Keller
Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas.
—Helen Keller
Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession.
—Helen Keller
We still have it in our power to rise above the fears, imagined and real, and to shoulder the great burdens which destiny has placed upon us, not for our country alone, but for the benefit of all the world. That is the only destiny worthy of America.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Destiny
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
Topics: Love
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
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, Beauty, Feelings, Living
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 which has been opened for us.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Opportunities, Cynicism, Resilience, Failure, Pessimism, Change, Happiness, Opportunity, Attitude
Life is either a great adventure or nothing.
—Helen Keller
Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Contentment, Happiness
It would be a blessing if each person could be blind and deaf for a few days during his adult life. It makes him appreciate sight and the joy of sound.
—Helen Keller
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