Tomorrow!’ What possibilities there are in that word. No matter how discouraging today, how gloomy with dark clouds, with terrors and illness and death, there’s always Tomorrow, with its promise of better things. Let us think then of Death as but one more tomorrow, filled with infinite promise and fulfillment.

Optimism that does not count the cost is like a house builded on sand. A man must understand evil and be acquainted with sorrow before he can write himself an optimist and expect others to believe that he has reason for the faith that is in him.

Sorrow is like the quieting caress of the dark. It veils the too glaring light of material day, and lets our minds behold the spiritual stars the sun hid from us

New sorrows teach new courage. Time makes the bitterest pain to ‘blossom like Aaron’s rod with flowers.

Happiness is like the mountain summit. It is sometimes hidden by clouds, but we know it is there.

Doubts and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.

Silver is purified in fire and so are we. It is in the most trying times that our real character is shaped and revealed.

When you lose your vision, you lose contact with things. When you lose your hearing, you lose contact with people.

My friends have made the story of my life.

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.

The world is not moved only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

Many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves – and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either.

Good friends walk in when the old ones walk out.

The mind is as big as the universe.

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.

It’s wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

True teaching cannot be learned from text-books any more than a surgeon can acquire his skill by reading about surgery.

The true test of a character is to face hard conditions with the determination to make them better.

When one reads hurriedly and nervously, having in mind written tests and examinations, one’s brain becomes encumbered with a lot of bric-a-brac for which there seems to be little use.

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

It seems strange to many people that I should be impressed by the wonders and beauties of Niagara. They are always asking: ‘what does this beauty or that music mean to you? You cannot see the waves rolling up the beach or hear their roar. What do they mean to you?’ In the most evident sense they mean everything.

You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.

A person who is severely impaired never knows his hidden sources of strength until he is treated like a normal human being and encouraged to shape his own life.

Happiness is the final and perfect fruit of obedience to the laws of life.

Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.

We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world–the company of those who have known suffering.

The unselfish effort to bring cheer to others will be the beginning of a happier life for ourselves.

I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower – the Light in my darkness, the Voice in my silence.

The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all . The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands – the ownership and control of their livelihoods – are set at naught, we can have neither men’s rights nor women’s rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.

Relationships are like Rome — difficult to start out, incredible during the prosperity of the ‘golden age’, and unbearable during the fall. Then, a new kingdom will come along and the whole process will repeat itself until you come across a kingdom like Egypt… that thrives, and continues to flourish. This kingdom will become your best friend, your soul mate, and your love.

Once I knew only darkness and stillness. My life was without past or future. But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.

It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal.

It gives me a deep, comforting sense that things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.

The welfare of each is bound up in the welfare of all.

What a blind person needs are not a teacher but another self.

College isn’t the place to go for ideas.

Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.

I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

God himself is not secure, having given man dominion over his work.

Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other’s welfare, and social justice can never be attained.

There is no better way to thank God for your sight than by giving a helping hand to someone in the dark.

Every one of us is blind and deaf until our eyes are opened to our fellowmen, until our ears hear the voices of humanity.

I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

The best and most beautiful thing in life is friendship that springs out of the heart, as fragrances out of the flower.

It is said that success is happiness. I think goodwill and service to all men are the true kind of happiness.

For one wild, glad moment we snapped the chain that binds us to earth, and joining hands with the winds we felt ourselves divine.

Our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding.

Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design.

One painful duty fulfilled makes the next plainer and easier.

I wonder what becomes of lost opportunities? Perhaps our guardian angel gathers them up as we drop them, and will give them back to us in the beautiful sometime when we have grown wiser, and learned how to use them rightly.

We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond the senses.

The bulk of the world’s knowledge is an imaginary construction.

The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has not Christmas in his heart. We sightless children had the best of eyes that day in our hearts and in our finger-tips. We were glad from the child’s necessity of being happy. The blind who have outgrown the child’s perpetual joy can be children again on Christmas Day and celebrate in the midst of them who pipe and dance and sing a new song!

The place between your comfort zone and your dream is where life takes place.

A bend in the road is not the end of the road…Unless you fail to make the turn.

Defeat is simply a signal to press onward.

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.

Knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge—broad, deep knowledge—is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low.

More than at any other time, when I hold a beloved book in my hand my limitations fall from me, my spirit is free.

Some of the most significant discoveries in modern science owe their origin to the imagination of men who had neither accurate knowledge nor exact instruments to demonstrate their beliefs.

I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.

So much has been given to me I have not time to ponder over that which has been denied.

If the blind put their hands in God’s, they find their way more surely than those who see but have not faith or purpose.

Four things to learn in life: To think clearly without hurry or confusion; To love everybody sincerely; To act in everything with the highest motives; To trust God unhesitatingly.

It is so pleasant to learn about new things. Every day I find how little I know, but I do not feel discouraged since God has given me an eternity in which to learn more.

I believe in the immortality of the soul because I have within me immortal longings.

I take happiness very seriously. It is a creed, a philosophy, and an objective.

There is joy in self-forgetfulness. So I try to make the light in others’ eyes my sun, the music in others’ ears my symphony, the smile on others’ lips my happiness.

If we do not like our work and do not try to get happiness out of it, we are a menace to our profession as well as to ourselves.

True education combines intellect, beauty, goodness, and the greatest of these is goodness.

I am thankful that in a troubled world no calamity can prevent the return of spring.

Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

I don’t want to live in a hand-me-down world of others’ experiences. I want to write about me, my discoveries, my fears, my feelings, about me.

If I write what my soul thinks it will be visible, and the words will be its body.

Capitalism will inevitably find itself face to face with a starving multitude of unemployed workers demanding food or destruction of the social order that has starved them and robbed them of their jobs.

If the capitalist class had the sense it is reputed to have, it would know that violence is the worst weapon that can be used against men who have nothing to lose and the world to gain.

I demand that the world be good, and lo, it obeys. I proclaim the world good, and facts range themselves to prove my proclamation overwhelmingly true.

Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.

So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.

Be of good cheer. Do not think of today’s failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.

To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.

While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.

Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.

Knowledge is love and light and vision.

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.

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

Science 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.

People don’t like to think, if one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.

The highest result of education is tolerance.

What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, For all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.

To keep our faces toward change, and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate, is strength undefeatable.

Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another’s pain, life is not in vain.

Unless we form the habit of going to the Bible in bright moments as well as in trouble, we cannot fully respond to its consolations because we lack equilibrium between light and darkness.

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 something that I can do.

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

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.

No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.

My share of the work may be limited, but the fact that it is work makes it precious.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

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

Great poetry needs no interpreter other than a responsive heart.

I rejoice to live in such a splendidly disturbing time!

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

We are never really happy until we try to brighten the lives of others.

Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.

Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

Every struggle is a victory.

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.

My work was practice, practice, practice.

Gradually I got used to the silence and darkness that surrounded me and forgot that it had ever been different, until she came—my teacher—who was to set my spirit free.

You cannot touch love but you can feel the sweetness it pours into everything.

When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

The best way out is always through.

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.

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

We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough.

A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.

Life is short and unpredictable. Eat the dessert first.

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but no vision.

What I’m looking for is not out there, it is in me.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.

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.

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.

Keep your face to the sun and you will never see the shadows.

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 been opened for us.

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.