What is worse than having no sight is being able to see but having no vision.
Helen KellerRead
Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. Hear the music of voices, the song of birds, the mighty strains of an orchestra as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow . . . Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again. Glory in all the facts of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you.
Interpretation
Appreciate the beauty of the world as if you may lose your senses tomorrow.
Helen Keller's quote encourages us to fully engage with and appreciate our senses, suggesting that we should experience the world with heightened awareness and gratitude. By imagining the loss of our abilities to see, hear, smell, and taste, we are inspired to cherish and celebrate the beauty and pleasures that life offers, nurturing a deeper connection with our experiences.
In practice
In a speech about mindfulness, someone might quote this to emphasize living in the moment.
What is worse than having no sight is being able to see but having no vision.
What could be worse than being born without sight? Being born with sight and no vision.
Knowledge is power." Rather, knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge - broad, deep knowledge - is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low. 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.
Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.
Our beloved ones have not 'gone to a far country.' It is only the veil of sense that separates them from us, and even that veil grows thin when our thoughts reach out to them.
It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.
Nothing of any consequence happens unless people get behind an idea. It begins with an individual and they share the idea with more individuals-and eventually it becomes a movement.
Mr. Olsen in the fifth grade made me want to be a writer. He said, 'Chuck, you do this really well. And this is much better than setting fires, so keep it up.' That made me a writer.
God wants you to be in the world, but so different from the world that you will change it. Get cracking.
America is the student who defies the odds to become the first in a family to go to college - the citizen who defies the cynics and goes out there and votes - the young person who comes out of the shadows to demand the right to dream. That's what America is about.
You are chosen to be faithful women of God in our day, to stand above pettiness, gossip, selfishness, lewdness, and all other forms of ungodliness. Recognize your divine birthright as daughters of our Heavenly Father.
blessing the boats (at saint mary’s) may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that
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