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 no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
Helen Keller - Courage - Life - Risk - Encouragement

A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.
Helen Keller - Life - Encouragement - Happiness - Challenges

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.
Helen Keller - Happiness - People

It was my teacher's genius, her quick sympathy, her loving tact which made the first years of my education so beautiful. It was because she seized the right moment to impart knowledge that made it so pleasant and acceptable to me.
Helen Keller - Encouragement - Knowledge - Learning

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.
Helen Keller - Happiness - Philanthropy - Ideas

It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster. There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference.
Helen Keller - Challenges - People - Mistakes - Optimistic

If I regarded my life from the point of view of the pessimist, I should be undone. I should seek in vain for the light that does not visit my eyes and the music that does not ring in my ears. I should beg night and day and never be satisfied. I should sit apart in awful solitude, a prey to fear and despair. But since I consider it a duty to myself and to others to be happy, I escape a misery worse than any physical deprivation.
Helen Keller - Life - Encouragement - Happiness - Challenges - Optimistic

Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was.
Helen Keller - Challenges - Knowledge - Learning

The beginning of my life was simple and much like every other little life. I came, I saw, I conquered, as the first baby in the family always does.
Helen Keller - Life