Helen Keller's Words

Can you imagine living in darkness - darkness that is paired with silence?  It seems the most cruel of partnerships.  This was Helen Keller's life after an illness took both her sight & ability to hear when she was less than two years old. The world {& perhaps even you & I} could easily write-off Miss Keller as a lost cause; no life – no true life – would ever be hers. Listen to the words of Miss Keller {rendered through sign language} & think again…       

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.


Many persons have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.


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.


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.


Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything good in the world.


The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt within the heart.


We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.


While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.


Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature... Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.


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.


When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.


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.


The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.


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.


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.


Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therein to be content.


Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.

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


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.


Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.


I don't want to spend my life - I want to invest it. I want to invest it in something that will last. I want to invest in eternity!

Did you think again?  What challenges in life can possibly stand with the conqueror of faith, hard work, prayer, & the Maker of it all?  

Love You,
-Bess-

*All words in blue are Helen Keller's.