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I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.
-Helen Keller
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Action(s)
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I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
-Helen Keller
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Apathy
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We may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings.
-Helen Keller
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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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Books
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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
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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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Desires
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One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
-Helen Keller
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Difficulty
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The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.
-Helen Keller
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Disability, Handicaps
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I have often been asked, Do not people bore you? I do not understand quite what that means. I suppose the calls of the stupid and curious, especially of newspaper reporters, are always inopportune. I also dislike people who try to talk down to my understanding. They are like people who when walking with you try to shorten their steps to suit yours; the hypocrisy in both cases is equally exasperating.
-Helen Keller
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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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College isn't the place to go for ideas.
-Helen Keller
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Effort
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When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.
-Helen Keller
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Eyes
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Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.
-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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Many people have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
-Helen Keller
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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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Knowledge
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Knowledge is power. Rather, knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge -- broad, deep knowledge -- is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low. To know the thoughts and deeds that have marked man's progress is to feel the great heartthrobs of humanity through the centuries; and if one does not feel in these pulsations a heavenward striving, one must indeed be deaf to the harmonies of life.
-Helen Keller
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Life
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Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others
-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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Museums, Galleries
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Museums and art stores are also sources of pleasure and inspiration. Doubtless it will seem strange to many that the hand unaided by sight can feel action, sentiment, beauty in the cold marble; and yet it is true that I derive genuine pleasure from touching great works of art. As my finger tips trace line and curve, they discover the thought and emotion which the artist has portrayed.
-Helen Keller
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Opportunity
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When one door closes, another opens. But we often look so regretfully upon the closed door that we don't see the one that has opened for us.
-Helen Keller
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Peace
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I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
-Helen Keller
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Persistence
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We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough.
-Helen Keller
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Books by and about Helen Keller