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
I do not remember a time since I have been capable of loving books that I have not loved Shakespeare.
I have depended on books not only for pleasure and for the wisdom they bring to all who read, but also for that knowledge which comes to others through their eyes and their ears.
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.
Literature is my Utopia
In a word, literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. The things I have learned and the things I have been taught seem of ridiculously little importance compared with their "large loves and heavenly charities.
I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light but who see nothing in sea or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books. It were far better to sail forever in the night of blindness with sense, and feeling, and mind, than to be content with the mere act of seeing. The only lightless dark is the night of darkness in ignorance and insensibility.
True teaching cannot be learned from text-books any more than a surgeon can acquire his skill by reading about surgery.
More than at any other time, when I hold a beloved book in my hand my limitations fall from me, my spirit is free.
It is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while.
True happiness...is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
I don't want peace that passeth understanding, I want understanding which bringeth peace.
I can feel the twinkle of his eye in his handshake.
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.
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.