Quotes from Anne Sullivan

We all like stories that make us cry. It's so nice to feel sad when you've nothing in particular to feel sad about.

I cannot explain it; but when difficulties arise, I am not perplexed or doubtful. I know how to meet them.

People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved.

My heart is singing for joy this morning! A miracle has happened! The light of understanding has shone upon my little pupil's mind, and behold, all things are changed!

It's a great mistake, I think, to put children off with falsehoods and nonsense, when their growing powers of observation and discrimination excite in them a desire to know about things.

Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.

It is a rare privilege to watch the birth, growth, and first feeble struggles of a living mind; this privilege is mine.

We are afraid of ideas, of experimenting, of change. We shrink from thinking a problem through to a logical conclusion.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart.

You cannot touch love . . . But you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything.

We all like stories that make us cry. It's so nice to feel sad when you've nothing in particular to feel sad about.

We imagine that we want to escape our selfish and commonplace existence, but we cling desperately to our chains.

My heart is singing for joy this morning! A miracle has happened! The light of understanding has shone upon my little pupil's mind, and behold, all things are changed!

I have thought about it a great deal, and the more I think, the more certain I am that obedience is the gateway through which knowledge, yes, and love, too, enter the mind of the child.

It's a great mistake, I think, to put children off with falsehoods and nonsense, when their growing powers of observation and discrimination excite in them a desire to know about things.

Obedience is the gateway through which knowledge enters the mind of the child.

People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved.

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think.

Too often, I think, children are required to write before they have anything to say. Teach them to think and read and talk with self-repression, and they will write because they cannot help it.

Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.

Is it not true, then, that my life with all its limitation touches at many points the life of the World Beautiful? Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be, therein to be content.

Fellow-graduates: Duty bids us go forth into active life. Let us go cheerfully, hopefully, and earnestly, and set ourselves to find our especial part. When we have found it, willingly and faithfully perform it; for every obstacle we overcome, every success we achieve tends to bring man closer to God and make life more as He would have it.

The Great War proved how confused the world is. Depression is proving it again.

Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose - not the one you began with perhaps, but one you'll be glad to remember.