So long as I confine my activities to social service and the blind, they compliment me extravagantly, calling me 'arch priestess of the sightless,' 'wonder woman,' and a 'modern miracle.' But when it comes to a discussion of poverty, and I maintain that it is the result of wrong economics-that the industrial system under which we live is at the root of much of the physical deafness and blindness in the world-that is a different matter!

Once I knew the depth where no hope was and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free. Once I fretted and beat myself against the wall that shut me in. My life was without a past or future, and death a consummation devoutly to be wished. But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hands that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped up with the rapture of living. I do not know the meaning of the darkness, but I have learned the overcoming of it.

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

Life is short and unpredictable. Eat the dessert first!

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

The worst calamity: 'To have eyes and fail to see.'

I have found out that though the ways in which I can make myself useful are few, yet the work open to me is endless.