All quotes

I, too, can work, and because I love to labor with my head and my hands, I am an optimist in spite of all.

If happiness is to be so measured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in a corner with folded hands and weep.

It lets us into the soul of things and teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.

My share in the work of the world may be limited; but the fact that it is work makes it precious.

Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things.

Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; the words that fall from others' lips they catch on the wing, as it were, delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow and often painful process.

Every struggle is a victory.

Had it not been for the persistent encouragement of Miss Sullivan, I think I should have given up trying to write altogether.

But I did not dream that that interview would be the door through which I should pass from darkness into light, from isolation to friendship, companionship, knowledge, love.

At the beginning I was only a little mass of possibilities. It was my teacher who unfolded and developed them.

I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon.

do not hope to excite love except by love

Fatal is the discovery that our friend is fallible, that he has prejudices.

Our thoughts would imply that other men have friends, though we have not.

Though my life is low, if my spirit looks upward habitually at an elevated angle, it is as it were redeemed.

The doctrines of despair, of spiritual or political tyranny or servitude, were never taught by such as shared the serenity of nature.

To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health.

The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream.

The world is beautiful because they have lived; without them, labouring humanity would perish.

In spite of failures, cooperative schemes went on, some of the same men appearing in one after another with irrepressible optimism.

Such a young person persistently believes that behind all suffering, behind sin and want, must lie redeeming magnanimity.

Let heart-sickness pass beyond a certain bitter point, and the heart loses its life for ever.

granting that we had both the will and the sense to choose our friends well, how few of us have the power! or, at least, how limited, for most, is the sphere of choice!

I seemed to have nothing left to live for.

I will try, Mother, I truly will. But you must help me, remind me, and keep me from flying out.