Helen Keller

I came, I saw, I conquered, as the first baby in the family always does.

If he could speak, I believe he would say with me that paradise is attained by touch; for in touch is all love and intelligence.

The will to be happy animates alike the philosopher, the prince and the chimney-sweep.

In a flash I knew that the word was the name of the process that was going on in my head.

The hand is my feeler with which I reach through isolation and darkness and seize every pleasure, every activity that my fingers encounter.

Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free.

Until then I had been like a foreigner speaking through an interpreter.

Eloquence to the touch resides not in straight lines, but in unstraight lines, or in many curved and straight lines together.

Can anyone who has escaped such captivity, who has felt the thrill and glory of freedom, be a pessimist?

I cannot fathom or define their meaning any more than I can fathom or define love or religion or goodness.

I am told that the glance of a beloved eye thrills one from a distance; but there is no distance in the touch of a beloved hand.

Only by contact with evil could I have learned to feel by contrast the beauty of truth and love and goodness.

Many scholars forget, it seems to me, that our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding.

I have felt his soul wrap itself in darkness majestically as in a garment.

A man must understand evil and be acquainted with sorrow before he can write himself an optimist and expect others to believe that he has reason for the faith that is in him.

In a word, literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised.

They are wild flowers of humanity, and their finger motions wild flowers of speech.

I am never discouraged by absence of good. I never can be argued into hopelessness.

Silence sits immense upon my soul.

Allusions to moonbeams and clouds do not emphasize the sense of my affliction: they carry my soul beyond affliction's narrow actuality.