Helen Keller was an amazing woman who overcame so much in her lifetime. Her legacy is best represented with some of her most quoted words and sayings.
Helen Keller – Author
Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama in 1880. When she was just 19 months old, she contracted an illness that left her deaf and blind. Despite her disabilities, Helen Keller went on to become one of the most well-known and respected figures of the 20th century.
Throughout her life, she continued to advocate for the rights of disabled people everywhere. In addition to writing several books about her own experiences, Keller also campaigned for women’s suffrage and workers’ rights.
Although she faced many challenges throughout her life, Helen Keller accomplished more than most people could ever dream of achieving. She is an inspiration to millions of people around the world who face challenges in their own lives. Here’s some of Helen Keller’s most quoted words and sayings.
Best Helen Keller Quotes
No one has the right to consume happiness without producing it.
– Helen Keller
It has been said that life has treated me harshly, and sometimes I have complained in my heart because many pleasures of human experience have been withheld from me… if much has been denied me, much, very much, has been given me…
– Helen Keller
Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them, but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.
– Helen Keller
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.
– Helen Keller
A person who is severely impaired never knows his hidden sources of strength until he is treated like a normal human being and encouraged to shape his own life.
– Helen Keller
One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
– Helen Keller
People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.
– Helen Keller
When you lose your vision, you lose contact with things. When you lose your hearing, you lose contact with people.
– Helen Keller
There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.
– Helen Keller
Life is short and unpredictable. Eat the dessert first.
– Helen Keller
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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
I thank God for my handicaps for, through them, I have found myself, my work, and my God.
– Helen Keller
We are never really happy until we try to brighten the lives of others.
– Helen Keller
What I’m looking for is not out there; it is in me.
– Helen Keller
Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
– Helen Keller
Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into light.
– Helen Keller
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Inspirational Helen Keller Quotes
The infinite wonders of the universe are revealed to us in exact measure as we are capable of receiving them. The keenness of our vision depends not on how much we can see, but on how much we feel.
– Helen Keller
Self-pity is our worst enemy, and if we yield to it, we can never do anything good in the world.
– Helen Keller
Every child has a right to be well-born, well-nurtured, and well-taught, and only the freedom of woman can guarantee him this right.
– Helen Keller
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.
– Helen Keller
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
Long before I learned to do a sum in arithmetic or describe the shape of the earth, Miss Sullivan had taught me to find beauty in the fragrant woods, in every blade of grass, and in the curves and dimples of my baby sister’s hand.
– Helen Keller
You cannot touch love, but you can feel the sweetness it pours into everything.
– Helen Keller
What a strange life I lead— a kind of Cinderella-life—half glitter in crystal shoes, half mice and cinders! But it is a wonderful life all the same.
– Helen Keller
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold. Faith alone defends.
– Helen Keller
All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.
– Helen Keller
The highest result of education is tolerance.
– Helen Keller
It all comes to this: the simplest way to be happy is to do good.
– Helen Keller
The chief handicap of the blind is not blindness, but the attitude of seeing people towards them.
– Helen Keller
I take happiness very seriously. It is a creed, a philosophy, and an objective.
– Helen Keller
The only thing worse than being blind is having sight and no vision.
– Helen Keller
The struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings. It makes us patient, sensitive, and Godlike. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
– Helen Keller
Related: Best Yoga Quotes
Quotes from Helen Keller
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
Meanwhile, the desire to express myself grew. The few signs I used became less and less adequate, and my failures to make myself understood were invariably followed by outbursts of passion.
– Helen Keller
What really counts in life is the quiet meeting of every difficulty with the determination to get out of it all the good there is.
– Helen Keller
While they were saying among themselves, it cannot be done; it was done.
– Helen Keller
I rejoice to live in such a splendidly disturbing time!
– Helen Keller
Education should train the child to use his brains, to make for himself a place in the world and maintain his rights even when it seems that society would shove him into the scrap-heap.
– Helen Keller
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 soul mate, and your love.
– Helen Keller
Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.
– Helen Keller.
The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
– Helen Keller
What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose. For all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.
– Helen Keller
The bulk of the world’s knowledge is an imaginary construction.
– Helen Keller
Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.
– Helen Keller
More than at any other time, when I hold a beloved book in my hand, my limitations fall from me, my spirit is free.
– Helen Keller
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
Famous Quotes by Helen Keller
I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
– Helen Keller
I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the color and fragrance of a flower – the Light in my darkness, the Voice in my silence.
– Helen Keller
What do I consider a teacher should be? One who breathes life into knowledge so that it takes new form in progress and civilization.
– Helen Keller
Unless we form the habit of going to the Bible in bright moments as well as in trouble, we cannot fully respond to its consolations because we lack equilibrium between light and darkness.
– Helen Keller
Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings.
– Helen Keller
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
Everything has its wonders, even darkness, and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
– Helen Keller
Happiness is the final and perfect fruit of obedience to the laws of life.
– Helen Keller
We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.
– Helen Keller
Great poetry needs no interpreter other than a responsive heart.
– Helen Keller
I am thankful that in a troubled world, no calamity can prevent the return of spring.
– Helen Keller
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
Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with a sense of responsibility for each other’s welfare, social justice can never be attained.
– Helen Keller
I am only one, but still, I am one. I cannot do everything, but still, I can do something: and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
– Helen Keller
I believe in the immortality of the soul because I have within me immortal longings.
– Helen Keller
As selfishness and complaint pervert and cloud the mind, so sex with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.
– Helen Keller
Quotations by Helen Keller
The world is not moved only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.
– Helen Keller
I believe humility is a virtue, but I prefer not to use it unless it is absolutely necessary.
– Helen Keller
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
– Helen Keller
Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much.
– Helen Keller
Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.
– Helen Keller
If we do not like our work and do not try to get happiness out of it, we are a menace to our profession as well as to ourselves.
– Helen Keller
We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.
– Helen Keller
Literature is my Utopia.
– Helen Keller
A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.
– Helen Keller
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.
– Helen Keller
Four things to learn in life: 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
Faith is a mockery if it does not teach us that we can build a more complete and beautiful world.
– Helen Keller
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.
– Helen Keller
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
Famous Helen Keller Quotes
The heart of a friend gives out sufficient light for us in the dark to rise by.
– Helen Keller
He who is content with what has been done is an obstacle in the path of progress.
– Helen Keller
True teaching cannot be learned from textbooks any more than a surgeon can acquire his skill by reading about surgery.
– Helen Keller
To keep on trying in spite of disappointment and failure is the only way to keep young and brave. Failures become victories if they make us wise-hearted.
– Helen Keller
Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words, but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design.
– Helen Keller
Knowledge is love and light and vision.
– Helen Keller
It is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble.
– Helen Keller
There is no better way to thank God for your sight than by giving a helping hand to someone in the dark.
– Helen Keller
When one reads hurriedly and nervously, having in mind written tests and examinations, one’s brain becomes encumbered with a lot of bric-a-brac for which there seems to be little use.
– Helen Keller
Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.
– Helen Keller
Keep your face to the sunshine, and you cannot see a shadow.
– Helen Keller
We have prayed, we have coaxed, we have begged, for the vote, with the hope that men, out of chivalry, would bestow equal rights upon women and take them into partnership in the affairs of the state. We hoped that their common sense would triumph over prejudices and stupidity. We thought their boasted sense of justice would overcome the errors that so often fetter the human spirit, but we have always gone away empty-handed. We shall beg no more.
– Helen Keller
Be of good cheer. Do not think of today’s failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere, and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.
– Helen Keller
Related: Finding yourself quotes
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
I am younger today than I was at twenty-five. Of course, the furrows of suffering have been dug deeper, but so have those of understanding sympathy and inner happiness. Whatever age may do to my earthly shell, I shall never grow cynical or indifferent—and one cannot measure the reserve power locked up in that assurance.
– Helen Keller
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
Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.
– Helen Keller
The true test of a character is to face hard conditions with the determination to make them better.
– Helen Keller
The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but no vision.
– Helen Keller
No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
– Helen Keller
If I write what my soul thinks, it will be visible, and the words will be its body.
– Helen Keller
You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.
– Helen Keller
Each day comes to me with both hands full of possibilities.
– Helen Keller
Helen Keller is one of the most famous and inspiring women in history. Despite being born deaf and blind, she overcame these obstacles to become a world-renowned author, speaker, and advocate for the disabled. Her story is one of courage, perseverance, and hope. Thanks to her tireless efforts, attitudes towards people with disabilities have changed for the better all over the world. Her story continues to inspire people of all ages to pursue their dreams and never give up hope.
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