77 quotes
I do not remember a time since I have been capable of loving books that I have not loved Shakespeare.
Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.
The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me.
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.
Optimism (1903)
A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.
The Simplest Way to be Happy (1933)
Love like Ruth's, love which can rise above conflicting creeds and deep-seated racial prejudices, is hard to find in all the world.
One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
The bulk of the world's knowledge is an imaginary construction.
The World I live in (1910)
Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas.
We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond the senses.
The Five-sensed World (1910)
The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has not Christmas in his heart.
Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought.
There are moments when I feel that the Shylocks, the Judases, and even the Devil, are broken spokes in the great wheel of good which shall in due time be made whole.
It seemed to me that there could be nothing more beautiful than the sun, whose warmth makes all things grow.
Only by contact with evil could I have learned to feel by contrast the beauty of truth and love and goodness.
Optimism (1903)
I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
Henry More: The Rational Theology of a Cambridge Plattonist (1962)
The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important, than those of blindness.
Letter to Dr. James Kerr Love (1910)
But whatever the process, the result is wonderful.
Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain.
We Bereaved (1929)
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart.