Reading Helen Keller

The thought of going to college took root in my heart and became an earnest desire, which impelled me to enter into competition for a degree with seeing and hearing girls, in the face of the strong opposition of many true and wise friends.

To know the thoughts and deeds that have marked man's progress is to feel the great heart-throbs 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.

I know there are many things in Shakespeare, and in the world, that I do not understand; and I am glad to see veil after veil lift gradually, revealing new realms of thought and beauty.

It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life.

All the friends I loved best, except one, have remained my own to the present time.

Every day in imagination I made a trip round the world, and I saw many wonders from the uttermost parts of the earth--marvels of invention, treasuries of industry and skill and all the activities of human life actually passed under my finger tips.

There are, however, times when I long to sweep away half the things I am expected to learn; for the overtaxed mind cannot enjoy the treasure it has secured at the greatest cost.

I have thus far sketched the events of my life, but I have not shown how much I have depended on books not only for pleasure and for the wisdom they bring to all who read, but also for that knowledge which comes to others through their eyes and their ears.

The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me.

I did nothing but explore with my hands and learn the name of every object that I touched; and the more I handled things and learned their names and uses, the more joyous and confident grew my sense of kinship with the rest of the world.

The beautiful truth burst upon my mind--I felt that there were invisible lines stretched between my spirit and the spirits of others.

Just as the wonder-working mantle of the Nautilus changes the material it absorbs from the water and makes it a part of itself, so the bits of knowledge one gathers undergo a similar change and become pearls of thought.

The barren places between my mind and the minds of others blossomed like the rose.

It is certain that I cannot always distinguish my own thoughts from those I read, because what I read becomes the very substance and texture of my mind.

We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent.

I love all writers whose minds, like Lowell's, bubble up in the sunshine of optimism--fountains of joy and good will, with occasionally a splash of anger and here and there a healing spray of sympathy and pity.

The rapid rush through the air gives me a delicious sense of strength and buoyancy, and the exercise makes my pulses dance and my heart sing.

Is it not true, then, that my life with all its limitations touches at many points the life of the World Beautiful?

That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!

There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.