Helen Keller
Helen Keller
Helen Adams Kellerwas an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deaf-blind person to earn a bachelor of arts degree. The story of how Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become widely known through the dramatic depictions of the play and film The Miracle Worker. Her birthplace in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, is now a museum and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth27 June 1880
CityTuscumbia, AL
CountryUnited States of America
When one door closes, another one opens, but sometimes we wait too long looking at the closed door, and never realize that another door has been opened.
The best preparedness is the one that disarms the hostility of other nations and makes friends of them.
Deep, solemn optimism, it seems to me, should spring from this firm belief in the presence of God in the individual; not a remote, unapproachable governor of the universe, but a God who is very near every one of us, who is present not only in earth, sea and sky, but also in every pure and noble impulse of our hearts.
How futile are words in the ears of those who mourn.
A good education is a stepping-stone to wealth.
Truly I have looked in the very heart of darkness and refused to yield to its paralyzing influence, but in spirit I am one of those who walk the morning.
If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life. If, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.
Obedience is the gateway through which knowledge enters the mind."
Observers in the full enjoyment of their bodily senses pity me, but it is because they do not see the golden chamber in my life where I dwell delighted; for, dark as my path may seem to them, I carry a magic light in my heart. Faith, the spiritual strong searchlight, illumines the way, and although sinister doubts lurk in the shadow, I walk unafraid towards the Enchanted Wood where the foliage is always green, where joy abides, where nightingales nest and sing, and where life and death are one in the Presence of the Lord.
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.
What if in my waking hours a sound should ring through the silent halls of hearing? ... Would the bow and string tension of life snap? Would the heart over weighted with sudden joy stop beating for very excess of happiness?
The best Christmas gift of all is the presence of a happy family all wrapped up with one another. Jesus is the reason for the season! From a little spark may burst a mighty flame. The only blind person at Christmastime is he who has not Christmas in his heart.
Cut off as I am, it is inevitable that I should sometimes feel like a shadow walking in a shadowy world. When this happens I ask to be taken to New York City. Always I return home weary but I have the comforting certainty that mankind is real flesh and I myself am not a dream.
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.