Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
Helen Keller
- Life
- 1880-1968
- Occupations
- writer, orator, essayist
- Notable works
- The Story of My Life, The Frost King
Facts: Wikidata (CC0), as of 2026-07-09
Helen Keller has been flattened into an inspiration poster, but the documented writer is stranger and more radical: a socialist, a suffragist, one of the founders of the ACLU, and a working author for six decades. The specifics beat the slogans -- 'to climb the liquid mountains of the sky' is Keller describing flight from inside the cockpit, and the literature-is-my-Utopia passage is her own account of reading by hand. The radical Keller rarely survives into the quote graphics.
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.
Helen Keller
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.
Helen Keller
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.
Helen Keller
It’s wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.
Helen Keller
It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears. On flying around the world
Helen Keller
Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.
Helen Keller
… 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.
Helen Keller
... 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 Story of My Life
Helen Keller
Many scholars forget … that our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding. … very few of their laborious explanations stick in the memory. The mind drops them as a branch drops its overripe fruit.
Helen Keller
… my soul stood erect, exultant, envisioning a new world where the light of justice for every individual will be unclouded.
Helen Keller
... my soul stood erect, exultant, envisioning a new world where the light of justice for every individual will be unclouded. letter to former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (1948)
Helen Keller
One cannot consent to creep when one has an impulse to soar.
Helen Keller
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.
Helen Keller
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.
Helen Keller