Helen Keller (1880-1968)

Helen Adams Keller was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer. Born in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, she lost her sight and her hearing after a bout of illness when she was 19 months old. She then communicated primarily using home signs until the age of seven, when she met her first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan. Sullivan taught Keller language, including reading and writing. After an education at both specialist and mainstream schools, Keller attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University and became the first deafblind person in the United States to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Quotes

The world is full of suffering but it is also full of people overcoming it.
Keep your face to the sun and you will never see the shadows.
Knowledge is love and light and vision.
Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.
Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.
I'm not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.
No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

Exploration
Character can not be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
I look upon the whole world as my fatherland, and every war has to me the horror of a family fued.
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I am in, therein to be content.
When one door of happiness closes another opens; but we often look so long at the closed one that we do not see the one which has opened for us.
There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.
When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.
No pessimest ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an unchartered land or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.
Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.
The best and most beautiful things cannot be seen or even heard, they must be felt with the heart.
When all you can feel are the shadows, turn your face towards the sun.
I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

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