Helen Keller

“The best and most beautiful things in the world can not be seen, nor touched…but are felt in the heart.” - Helen Keller

Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, activist and lecturer. She was the first deaf, blind person to graduate from college.

I shall never forget when Helen Keller visited our third grade class. She was in her late sixties at the time, a large woman, quite tall, I remember, and utterly radiant. Her eyes saw nothing and yet were seeing everything. Her smile was a beneficence welcoming the world. I had never seen anybody so full of presence and joy in my life…
When she began to speak, I heard the voice of a prophet- one whose strange inflections and pronunciations were those of someone who had never heard speech. After she had finished, I was so deeply moved that I knew I had to speak to her. I didn’t know what I wanted to say, but I knew I had to speak to her nonetheless. When her companion asked if anyone had a question, my classmates squirmed and looked sheepishly at one another. But I found myself raising my hand and going up to her.
Miss Keller placed her entire hand on my face in order to read my question. Her fingers read my expression, while the centre of her palm read my lips. Still I did not know what I was going to ask. Her hand did not move from my face.
Finally I blurted out what was in my heart: “Why are you so happy?”
She laughed and laughed, laughter rising from another dimension - the laughter of a sequoia.
“My child,” she said, her voice wandering between octaves, “it is because I live each day as though it were my last. And life in all its moments is so full of glory.”

— Jean Houston
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