Helen Keller Quotes

219 Sourced Quotes

Sick or well, blind or seeing, bond or free, we are here for a purpose and however we are situated, we please God better with useful deeds than with many prayers or pious resignation. The temple or church is empty unless the good of life fills it... holy if only... we offer the only sacrifices ever commanded-the love that is stronger than hate and the faith that overcometh doubt.

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
I grow more and more suspicious of the political powers that take men away from their work and set them shooting one another.

Helen Keller
I, too, can work, and because I love to labor with my head and my hands, I am an optimist in spite of all. I used to think I should be thwarted in my desire to do something useful. But 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
I am conscious of a soul-sense that lifts me above the narrow, cramping circumstances of my life. My physical limitations are forgotten- my world lies upward, the length and the breadth and the sweep of the heavens are mine!

Helen Keller
One painful duty fulfilled makes the next plainer and easier.

Helen Keller
No loss by flood and lightning, no destruction of cities and temples by the hostile forces of nature, has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his intolerance has destroyed.

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

Helen Keller
Happiness is like the mountain summit. It is sometimes hidden by clouds, but we know it is there.

Helen Keller
He who is content with what has been done is an obstacle in the path of progress.

Helen Keller
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
Our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding.

Helen Keller
The Bible gives me a deep, comforting sense that "things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal."

Helen Keller
Never bend your head. Hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.

Helen Keller
It all comes to this: the simplest way to be happy is to do good.

Helen Keller
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
Faith is a mockery if it does not teach us that we can build a more complete and beautiful world.

Helen Keller
The best and most beautiful things in life cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart.

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
A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.

Helen Keller
I wonder what becomes of lost opportunities? Perhaps our guardian angel gathers them up as we drop them, and will give them back to us in the beautiful sometime when we have grown wiser, and learned how to use them rightly.

Helen Keller
The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life. If it be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, then it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy.

Helen Keller
I, who have never heard a sound, tell you there is no silence, and I, who have never seen a ray of light, tell you there is no darkness.

Helen Keller
I regard philanthropy as a tragic apology for wrong conditions under which human beings live.

Helen Keller
This great republic is a mockery of freedom as long as you are doomed to dig and sweat to earn a miserable living while the masters enjoy the fruit of your toil.

Helen Keller
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
For some inexplicable reason the sense of smell does not hold the high position it deserves among its sisters. There is something of the fallen angel about it.

Helen Keller
Serious harm, I am afraid, has been wrought to our generation by fostering the idea that they would live secure in a permanent order of things.

Helen Keller
It is not possible for civilization to flow backward while there is youth in the world.

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