Motivational quotes

I, too, can work, and because I love to labor with my head and my hands, I am an optimist in spite of all.

Keller reflects on the hope, useful work, and connection she finds in her own life.

Now I rejoice in the consciousness that I can think, act and attain heaven.

Keller reflects on the hope, useful work, and connection she finds in her own life.

I remember an hour when I was discouraged and ready to falter. For days I had been pegging away at a task which refused to get itself accomplished.

Keller recalls being discouraged by a difficult task before an essay by Robert Louis Stevenson helped her return to it.

There, too, after a fit of temper, I went to find comfort and to hide my hot face in the cool leaves and grass.

Keller remembers finding sensory comfort in her childhood garden after distress.

But I did not dream that that interview would be the door through which I should pass from darkness into light, from isolation to friendship, companionship, knowledge, love.

Keller recalls the meeting with Alexander Graham Bell that led her family toward education and a teacher.

At the beginning I was only a little mass of possibilities. It was my teacher who unfolded and developed them.

Keller describes the possibilities within her that Anne Sullivan helped to develop.

I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon.

Keller describes uneven progress in her college studies, including frustration, pauses, and renewed effort.

What a joy it is to feel the soft, springy earth under my feet once more, to follow grassy roads that lead to ferny brooks where I can bathe my fingers in a cataract of rippling notes, or to clamber over a stone wall into green fields that tumble and roll and climb in riotous gladness!

Keller describes the pleasure and freedom she experiences outdoors through touch and movement.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

As there are silent depths in the ocean which the fiercest storm cannot reach, so there are silent, holy depths in the heart of man which the storms of sin and sorrow can never disturb.

Sorrow purifies and deepens the soul, and the extremity of sorrow is the prelude to Truth.

The man that stands upon a principle is the same calm, dauntless, self-possessed man under all circumstances.