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 something that I can do.
– Helen Keller
Perseverance | Faithful
You will find a joy in overcoming obstacles.
– Helen Keller
Overcoming | Joy
The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.
– Helen Keller
Character | Vision
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
The Bible
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. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
– Helen Keller
Life
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
Death
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
Perseverance
We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.
– Helen Keller
Patience | Joy
Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.
– Helen Keller
Faith | Strength | Light
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
Happiness
Your success and happiness lie in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invisible host against difficulties.
– Helen Keller
Success | Happiness | Adversity
To keep our faces toward change, and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate, is strength undefeatable.
– Helen Keller
Patience | Change | Freedom
Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.
– Helen Keller
Friendship
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.
– Helen Keller
Contentment | Beauty | The Heart
Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.
– Helen Keller
Encouragement | Gratitude
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.
– Helen Keller
Achievement | Friendship
I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.
– Helen Keller
Patience
My share of the work may be limited, but the fact that it is work makes it precious.
– Helen Keller
Faithful | Service | Work
I thank God for my handicaps for, through them, I have found myself, my work, and my God.
– Helen Keller
Patience | Work
We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.
– Helen Keller
Achievement
It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal.
– Helen Keller
Perseverance | Goals | Power
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.
– Helen Keller
Friendship
So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.
– Helen Keller
Friendship
A simple, childlike faith in a Divine Friend solves all the problems that come to us by land or sea.
– Helen Keller
Faith
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
Youth
Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.
– Helen Keller
Discouragement | Self-pity
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
Books
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
Adversity | Overcoming
Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.
– Helen Keller
Service
Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.
– Helen Keller
Blessings
There is plenty of courage among us for the abstract, but not for the concrete.
– Helen Keller
Courage
Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.
– Helen Keller
Patience | Fire | Joy
Knowledge is love and light and vision.
– Helen Keller
Knowledge | Vision | Light
Discouraged not by difficulties without, or the anguish of ages within, the heart listens to a secret voice that whispers: “Be not dismayed; in the future lies the Promised Land.”
– Helen Keller
Encouragement | The Future
I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
– Helen Keller
Peace
As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.
– Helen Keller
Selfishness | Love | Vision
Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other’s welfare, social justice can never be attained.
– Helen Keller
Service | Responsibility
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
Happiness
Just as all things upon earth represent and image forth all the realities of another world, so the Bible is one mighty representative of the whole spiritual life of humanity.
– Helen Keller
The Bible
I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.
– Helen Keller
Patience
What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.
– Helen Keller
Love
No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.
– Helen Keller
Happiness
All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.
– Helen Keller
Suffering | Overcoming
No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.
– Helen Keller
Perseverance
The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
– Helen Keller
Fear
Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.
– Helen Keller
Reasoning
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
– Helen Keller
Life
The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.
– Helen Keller
Heresy
It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.
– Helen Keller
Apathy
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
Achievement
People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.
– Helen Keller
Reasoning
As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.
– Helen Keller
Reasoning
The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.
– Helen Keller
Success
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
Friendship
Doubts and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.
– Helen Keller
Fear | Doubt | The Heart
What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.
– Helen Keller
Contentment
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
– Helen Keller
Suffering | Character | Strength
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
Encouragement | Circumstances
When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.
– Helen Keller
Miracles
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
– Helen Keller
Contentment
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
Love | Beauty
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
Ignorance
Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature.
– Helen Keller
Patience
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
Leadership
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 envy.
– Helen Keller
Love | Envy
No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.
– Helen Keller
Happiness
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
Happiness | Joy
One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
– Helen Keller
Achievement
Once I knew only darkness and stillness – my life was without past or future – but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.
– Helen Keller
Encouragement | The Future
While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.
– Helen Keller
Achievement
The highest result of education is tolerance.
– Helen Keller
Education | Tolerance
The million little things that drop into your hands – the small opportunities each day brings He leaves us free to use or abuse and goes unchanging along His silent way.
– Helen Keller
Obedience | Freedom
No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
– Helen Keller
Apathy
I believe in the immortality of the soul because I have within me immortal longings.
– Helen Keller
Eternity
What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self.
– Helen Keller
Encouragement | Teachers
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.
– Helen Keller
Hope | Achievement
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
Apathy
Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.
– Helen Keller
Life
I believe that life is given us so that we may grow in love, and I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the color and fragrance of a flower.
– Helen Keller
Love | Life
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
Inspiration
I never fight, except against difficulties.
– Helen Keller
Adversity
God Himself is not secure, having given man dominion over His work.
– Helen Keller
God | Work
To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.
– Helen Keller
Inspiration
Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!
– Helen Keller
War
It’s wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.
– Helen Keller
Fear
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
Reasoning | Tolerance
College isn’t the place to go for ideas.
– Helen Keller
Education