Monday, June 27, 2005

Helen Keller on Life and (True) Happiness

Today is the birthday of Helen Keller, the woman (1880-1968) some of whose opinions could be said to apply to (among other things) Europe's cradle-to-grave protectionist mentality and its hopes for a brave new (UN-dominated) world:
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.

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.

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

College isn't the place to go for ideas.

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.

All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.

As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction!

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched — they must be felt with the heart.

When one door of happiness closes, another one opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.

Related post: Annie Sullivan

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