Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; the words that fall from others' lips they catch on the wing, as it were, delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow and often painful process. But whatever the process, the result is wonderful. Gradually from naming an object we advance step by step until we have traversed the vast distance between our first stammered syllable and the sweep of thought in a line of Shakespeare.

The highest result of education is tolerance. Long ago men fought and died for their faith; but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage, - the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren and their rights of conscience.

The worst thing is to be born sighted but to lack vision.

No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars.

The struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings. It makes us patient, sensitive, and Godlike. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

Blindness separates us from things but deafness separates us from people.

I have often been asked, Do not people bore you? I do not understand quite what that means. I suppose the calls of the stupid and curious, especially of newspaper reporters, are always inopportune. I also dislike people who try to talk down to my understanding. They are like people who when walking with you try to shorten their steps to suit yours; the hypocrisy in both cases is equally exasperating.