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Art
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I sometimes wonder if the hand is not more sensitive to the beauties of sculpture than the eye. I should think the wonderful rhythmical flow of lines and curves could be more subtly felt than seen. Be this as it may, I know that I can feel the heart-throbs of the ancient Greeks in their marble gods and goddesses.
-Helen Keller, The Story of My Life, pt. 1, ch. 22, 1903
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Beauty
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The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.
-Helen Keller
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Character
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"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved."
-Helen Keller
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Danger
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Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is not safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
-Helen Keller, Let Us Have Faith, 1940
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Education
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A child must feel the flush of victory and the heart-sinking of disappointment before he takes with a will to the tasks distasteful to him and resolves to dance his way through a dull routine of textbooks.
-Helen Keller
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Faith
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I know that faith made my life possible and that of many others like me... Reason hardly warranted Anne Sullivan's attempt to transform a little half-human, half-animal, deaf-blind child into a complete human being. Neither science nor philosophy had set such a goal, but faith, the eye of love did. I did not know I had a soul. Then the God in a wise heart drew me out of nothingness with cords of human love and the life belt of language, and lo, I found myself. In my doubly shadowed world faith gives me a reason for trying to draw harmony out of a marred instrument. Faith is not a cushion for me to fall back upon; it is my working energy.
-Helen Keller, Let Us Have Faith, 1940
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Happiness
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"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 opened for us."
-Helen Keller
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Mathematics
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Now I feel as if I should succeed in doing something in mathematics, although I cannot see why it is so very important... The knowledge doesn't make life any sweeter or happier, does it?
-Helen Keller, The Story of My Life, 1903
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Pessimism
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"No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit."
-Helen Keller
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Sunshine
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Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.
-Helen Keller
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Unity
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Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.
-Helen Keller
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Youth
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It is not possible for civilization to flow backward while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance its allotted length.
-Helen Keller
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Books by and about Helen Keller
