“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“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 Primary source“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life. It be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, them it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“The highest result of education is tolerance.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“I do not remember a time since I have been capable of loving books that I have not loved Shakespeare.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“For those who live with God there is no last meeting.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“‘Tomorrow!’ What possibilities there are in that word.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“Tears can only be cured by vision.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my bookfriends. 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.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“Be of good cheer. Do not think of today’s failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“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 Primary source“Let us not weep for those who have gone away when their lives were at full bloom and beauty. Who are we that we should mourn them and wish them back? Life at its every stage is good, but who shall say whether those who die in the splendor of their prime are not fortunate to have known no abatement, no dulling of the flame by ash, no slow fading of life’s perfect flower.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“A bend in the road is not the end of the road… Unless you fail to make the turn.”
— Helen Keller Disputed“We can do anything we want as long as we stick to it long enough.”
— Helen Keller Disputed“Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything good in the world.”
— Helen Keller Disputed“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
— Helen Keller DisputedEleanor Roosevelt Amelia Earhart Franklin D. Roosevelt Ernest Hemingway Thomas Edison