What is worse than having no sight is being able to see but having no vision.
Helen KellerRead
Usually they are quick to discover that I cannot see or hear.... It is not training but love which impels them to break their silence about me with the thud of a tail rippling against my chair on gambols round the study, or news conveyed by expressive ear, nose, and paw. Often I yearn to give them speech, their motions are so eloquent with things they cannot say.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the deep bond and communication between Helen Keller and her animal companions, emphasizing love over training.
Helen Keller reflects on her relationship with animals, illustrating how their love and innate desire to connect go beyond verbal communication. Despite her inability to see or hear, she feels a profound understanding and expresses a yearning for them to share their thoughts, indicating the richness of non-verbal connection and the emotional depth found in love between humans and animals.
In practice
In a presentation about the importance of animal companionship and empathy.
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.
Some emotions don't make a lot of noise. It's hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint - like a heartbeat. And pure love - why, some days it's so quiet, you don't even know it's there.
So they loved as love in twain Had the essence but in one; Two distinct, divisions none.
I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I Did, till we loved? were we not weaned till then? But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the seven sleepers' den?
Love does not make you weak, because it is the source of all strength, but it makes you see the nothingness of the illusory strength on which you depended before you knew it.
The life so brief, the art so long in the learning, the attempt so hard, the conquest so sharp, the fearful joy that ever slips away so quickly - by all this I mean love, which so sorely astounds my feeling with its wondrous operation, that when I think upon it I scarce know whether I wake or sleep.
I'll make you mine, lovers said in old books. They never said, I'll make you me.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.