Helen Keller
Blind and deaf since infancy, American memoirist and lecturer Helen Adams Keller learned to read, to write, and to speak from her teacher Anne Sullivan, graduated from Radcliffe in 1904, and lectured widely on behalf of sightless people; her books include
Out of the Dark
(1913).
Conditions bound not Keller. Scarlet fever rendered her deaf and blind at 19 months; she in several languages and as a student wrote
The Story of My Life
. In this age, few women then attended college, and people often relegated the disabled to the background and spoke of the disabled only in hushed tones, when she so remarkably accomplished. Nevertheless, alongside many other impressive achievements, Keller authored 13 books, wrote countless articles, and devoted her life to social reform. An active and effective suffragist, pacifist, and socialist (the latter association earned her a file of Federal Bureau of Investigation), she lectured on behalf of disabled people everywhere. She also helped to start several foundations that continue to improve the lives of the deaf and blind around the world.
As a young girl, obstinate Keller, prone to fits of violence, seethed with rage at her inability to express herself. Nevertheless, at the urging of Alexander Graham Bell, Anne Sullivan, a teacher, transformed this wild child at the age of 7 years in an event that she declares "the most important day I remember in all my life." (After a series of operations, Sullivan, once blind, partially recovered her sight.) In a memorable passage, Keller writes of the day "Teacher" led her to a stream and repeatedly spelled out the letters w-a-t-e-r on one of her hands while pouring water over the other. This method proved a revelation: "That living world awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away." And, indeed, most of them were. In her lovingly crafted and deeply perceptive autobiography, Keller's joyous spirit is most vividly expressed in her connection to nature: Indeed, everything that could hum, or buzz, or sing, or bloom, had a part in my education.... Few know what joy it is to feel the roses pressing softly into the hand, or the beautiful motion of the lilies as they sway in the morning breeze. Sometimes I caught an insect in the flower I was plucking, and I felt the faint noise of a pair of wings rubbed together in a sudden terror.... The idea of feeling rather than hearing a sound, or of admiring a flower's motion rather than its color, evokes a strong visceral sensation in the reader, giving The Story of My Life a subtle power and beauty. Keller's celebration of discovery becomes our own. In the end, this blind and deaf woman succeeds in sharpening our eyes and ears to the beauty of the world. --Shawn Carkonen
“I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace. ”
“I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.”
“So much has been given to me I have not time to ponder over that which has been denied.”
“Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.”
“No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.”
“I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower - the Light in my darkness, the Voice in my silence.”
“I thank God for my handicaps. For through them, I have found myself, my work and my God.”
“Life is a succesion of lessons which must be lived to be understood.”
“It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears”
“Salah satu pintu kebahagian tertutup, pintu yang lain terbuka. Hanya sering kali kita terpaku begitu lama pada pintu yang tertutup sehingga tak melihat yang telah terbuka untuk kita”
“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.”
“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.”
“People don’t like to think, if one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.”
“We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world”
“Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each others welfare, social justice can never be attained.”
“The one I felt and still feel most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words ofsome loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts. One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures--solitude, books and imagination--outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches against a rainy day.”
“For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way. 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. Every struggle is a victory. One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire.”
“I do not mean to object to a thorough knowledge of the famous works we read. I object only to the interminable comments and bewildering criticisms that teach but one thing: there are as many opinions as there are men.”
“But the examinations are the chief bugbears of my college life. Although I have faced them many times and cast them down and made them bite the dust, yet they rise again and menace me with pale looks, until like Bob Acres I feel my courage oozing out at my finger ends. The days before these ordeals take place are spent in cramming your mind with mystic formula and indigestible dates—unpalatable diets, until you wish that books and science and you were buried in the depths of the sea.At last the dreaded hour arrives, and you are a favoured being indeed if you feel prepared, and are able at the right time to call to your standard thoughts that will aid you in that supreme effort. It happens too often that your trumpet call is unheeded. It is most perplexing and exasperating that just at the moment when you need your memory and a nice sense of discrimination, these faculties take to themselves wings and fly away. The facts you have garnered with such infinite trouble invariably fail you at a pinch.”
“When one reads hurriedly and nervously, having in mind written tests and examinations, one's brain becomes encumbered with a lot of bric-a-brac for which there seems to be little use.”
“...our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding.”
“So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain.”
“College isn't the place to go for ideas.”
“When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.”
“The highest result of education is tolerance”
“Never bend your head. Hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.”
“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement ”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“As selfishness and complaint pervert and cloud the mind, so sex with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.”
“Keep your face to the sun and you will never see the shadows.”
“I rejoice to live in such a splendidly disturbing time!”
“Literature is my Utopia”
“Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings.”
“The most pathetic person in the world is some one who has sight but no vision.”
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”
“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
“Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content”
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”
“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”
“Knowledge is love and light and vision.”
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart”
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
“What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, For all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.”
“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.”
“For three things I thank God every day of my life: thanks that he has vouchsafed me knowledge of his works; deep thanks that he has set in my darkness the lamp of faith; deep, deepest thanks that I have another life to look forward to--a life joyous with light and flowers and heavenly song.”
“As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.”