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Inspirational Quotations

by RightAttitudes.com

Inspirational Quotes by Helen Keller (American Author)

Inspirational Quotations by Helen Keller (American Author)

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

Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.
—Helen Keller

My share of the work of the world may be limited, but the fact that it is work makes it precious. Darwin could work only half an hour at a time; but in many diligent half-hours he laid anew the foundations of philosophy. Green, the historian, tells us that the world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Work

The welfare of each is bound up in the welfare of all.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Teams, Teamwork

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Happiness, Gratitude, Wonder, Blessings, Appreciation, Acceptance

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

Defeat is simply a signal to press onward.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Perseverance

I sometimes wonder if the hand is not more sensitive to the beauties of sculpture than the eye. I should think the wonderful rhythmical flow of lines and curves could be more subtly felt than seen. Be this as it may, I know that I can feel the heart-throbs of the ancient Greeks in their marble gods and goddesses.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Art

Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Happiness, Contentment

My darkness has been filled with the light of intelligence, and behold, the outer day-lit world was stumbling and groping in social blindness.
—Helen Keller

A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.
—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: Giving, Service, Kindness

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
Topics: Royalty, Kings, Queens

Literature is my utopia.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Literature

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

God Himself is not secure, having given man dominion over His works.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Safety, Security

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

We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Persistence, Perseverance, Endurance, Success, Resolve

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

Not the senses I have but what I do with them is my kingdom.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Success & Failure, Success

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

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.
—Helen Keller

My friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges, and enabled me to walk serene and happy in the shadow cast by my deprivation.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Friendship

Now I feel as if I should succeed in doing something in mathematics, although I cannot see why it is so very important… The knowledge doesn’t make life any sweeter or happier, does it?
—Helen Keller
Topics: Mathematics

There is plenty of courage among us for the abstract, but not for the concrete.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Courage

I know that faith made my life possible and that of many others like me… Reason hardly warranted Anne Sullivan’s attempt to transform a little half-human, half-animal, deaf-blind child into a complete human being. Neither science nor philosophy had set such a goal, but faith, the eye of love did. I did not know I had a soul. Then the God in a wise heart drew me out of nothingness with cords of human love and the life belt of language, and lo, I found myself. In my doubly shadowed world faith gives me a reason for trying to draw harmony out of a marred instrument. Faith is not a cushion for me to fall back upon; it is my working energy.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Faith

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

I thank God for my handicaps, for, through them, I have found myself, my work, and my God
—Helen Keller
Topics: Difficulties, Adversity

There is much in the Bible against which every instinct of my being rebels, so much that I regret the necessity which has compelled me to read it through from beginning to end. I do not think that the knowledge which I have gained of its history and sources compensates me for the unpleasant details it has forced upon my attention.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Bible

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

I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Peace

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