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The Open Door
Katherine Cornell writes, "Today the name of Helen Keller is known by millions all over the world. But not because she is deaf and blind. Thousands have been, are, and will be deaf and blind. And not because, being deaf and blind, she learned to read and write and speak. But because although she is deaf and blind, she learned to think with a philosophical depth of understanding that reaches the minds and hearts of all, and because she learned to express those thoughts with a clarity all writers must envy. Helen Keller is thought of as a phenomenon, a miracle, a humanitarian, and educator. That she is also a philosopher and a writer will be found, I believe, by those who read these excerpts from her several books, to which it is now my pleasure to commend you." From the Foreword.
- GenresNonfiction
140 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1902
4 people are currently reading
472 people want to read
About the author
Helen Keller
337 books1,820 followersBlind and deaf since infancy, American memoirist and lecturer Helen Adams Keller learned to read, to write, and to speak from her teacher Anne Sullivan, graduated from Radcliffe in 1904, and lectured widely on behalf of sightless people; her books include
Out of the Dark
(1913).
Conditions bound not Keller. Scarlet fever rendered her deaf and blind at 19 months; she in several languages and as a student wrote The Story of My Life . In this age, few women then attended college, and people often relegated the disabled to the background and spoke of the disabled only in hushed tones, when she so remarkably accomplished. Nevertheless, alongside many other impressive achievements, Keller authored 13 books, wrote countless articles, and devoted her life to social reform. An active and effective suffragist, pacifist, and socialist (the latter association earned her a file of Federal Bureau of Investigation), she lectured on behalf of disabled people everywhere. She also helped to start several foundations that continue to improve the lives of the deaf and blind around the world.
As a young girl, obstinate Keller, prone to fits of violence, seethed with rage at her inability to express herself. Nevertheless, at the urging of Alexander Graham Bell, Anne Sullivan, a teacher, transformed this wild child at the age of 7 years in an event that she declares "the most important day I remember in all my life." (After a series of operations, Sullivan, once blind, partially recovered her sight.) In a memorable passage, Keller writes of the day "Teacher" led her to a stream and repeatedly spelled out the letters w-a-t-e-r on one of her hands while pouring water over the other. This method proved a revelation: "That living world awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away." And, indeed, most of them were.
Conditions bound not Keller. Scarlet fever rendered her deaf and blind at 19 months; she in several languages and as a student wrote The Story of My Life . In this age, few women then attended college, and people often relegated the disabled to the background and spoke of the disabled only in hushed tones, when she so remarkably accomplished. Nevertheless, alongside many other impressive achievements, Keller authored 13 books, wrote countless articles, and devoted her life to social reform. An active and effective suffragist, pacifist, and socialist (the latter association earned her a file of Federal Bureau of Investigation), she lectured on behalf of disabled people everywhere. She also helped to start several foundations that continue to improve the lives of the deaf and blind around the world.
As a young girl, obstinate Keller, prone to fits of violence, seethed with rage at her inability to express herself. Nevertheless, at the urging of Alexander Graham Bell, Anne Sullivan, a teacher, transformed this wild child at the age of 7 years in an event that she declares "the most important day I remember in all my life." (After a series of operations, Sullivan, once blind, partially recovered her sight.) In a memorable passage, Keller writes of the day "Teacher" led her to a stream and repeatedly spelled out the letters w-a-t-e-r on one of her hands while pouring water over the other. This method proved a revelation: "That living world awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away." And, indeed, most of them were.
In her lovingly crafted and deeply perceptive autobiography, Keller's joyous spirit is most vividly expressed in her connection to nature:
Indeed, everything that could hum, or buzz, or sing, or bloom, had a part in my education.... Few know what joy it is to feel the roses pressing softly into the hand, or the beautiful motion of the lilies as they sway in the morning breeze. Sometimes I caught an insect in the flower I was plucking, and I felt the faint noise of a pair of wings rubbed together in a sudden terror....
The idea of feeling rather than hearing a sound, or of admiring a flower's motion rather than its color, evokes a strong visceral sensation in the reader, giving The Story of My Life a subtle power and beauty. Keller's celebration of discovery becomes our own. In the end, this blind and deaf woman succeeds in sharpening our eyes and ears to the beauty of the world. --Shawn Carkonen
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
June 30, 2013
These words in The Open Door speak for themselves. Don’t forget, as you read them, who is speaking. A woman who had no sight and no hearing. She only had taste and touch and smell. I might give up smell, taste and reluctantly, touch, but as I write a review of a book I read, I am listening to music, and cherish each second after reading this collection of Helen Keller’s words. Furthermore, this book was published in 1902, over a hundred years ago, and still, still moves and inspires and is still relevant, incredibly relevant to our lives. The book is old, and musty, although this printing is from 1957, but my sense of smell was engaged, the touch of an old book left a residue on my hands, and I am allergic and sensitive to the mustiness of books, so I could taste it also. I cried over some of the passages, so my sight was affected, and I poured over the antiqueness of this book, which spoke to my heart, calmed me, inspired me, and left me a better person, and a determined one with a religion of optimism reverberating with Keller’s words.
I am such a dork, I was pretty excited that I stumbled across this book, and had to take pictures of it and try to update it as my first act as a Goodreads librarian. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out if the book truly has an ISBN number; the current profile has an Amazon number, but this deserves a more respectable ISBN number. I did write my first description, although I just copied part of the foreword. Fun!
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
“Truly I have looked into the very heart of darkness, and refused to yield to its paralyzing influence, but in spirit I am one of those who walk the morning. What if all dark, discouraging moods of the human mind come across my way as thick as the dry leaves of autumn? Other feet have traveled that road before me, and I know the desert leads to god as surely as the green, refreshing fields, and orchards.”
“If there were no life beyond this earth-life, some people I have known would gain immortality by the nobility of our memory of them. With every friend I love who has been taken into the brown bosom of the earth a part of me has been buried there; but their contribution of happiness, strength, and understanding to my being remains to sustain me in a altered world.”
“Certainly I believe that God gave us life for happiness, not misery. Humanity, I am sure, will never be made lazy or indifferent by an excess of happiness. Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. Happiness should be a means of accomplishment, like health, not an end in itself.”
“It is beyond a doubt that everyone should have time for some special delight, if only five minutes each day to seek out a lovely flower or cloud or star, or learn a verse to brighten another’s dull task. What is the use of such terrible diligence as many tire themselves out with, if they always postpone their exchanges of smiles with Beauty and Joy to cling to irksome duties and relations? Unless they admit these fair, fresh, and eternal presences into their lives as they can, they must needs shut themselves out of heaven, and a gray dust settles on all existence. That the sky is brighter than the earth means little unless the earth itself is appreciated and enjoyed. Its beauty loved gives the right to aspire to the radiance of the sunrise and stars.”
“Hold out your hands to feel the luxury of sunbeams. Press the soft blossoms against your cheek, and finger their graces of form, their delicate mutability of shape, their pliancy and freshness. Expose your face to the aerial floods that sweep the heavens, ‘inhale great draughts of space,’ wonder, wonder at the wind’s unwearied activity. Pile note on note the infinite music that flows increasingly to your soul from the tactual sonorities of a thousand branches and tumbling waters. How can the world be shriveled when this most profound, emotional sense, touch, is faithful to its service? I am sure that if a fairy bade me choose between the sense of sight and that of touch, I would not part with the warm, endearing contact of human hands…”
“When the sun of consciousness first shone upon me, behold a miracle! The stock of my young life which had perished, steeped in the waters of knowledge grew again, budded again, was sweet again with the blossoms of childhood. Down in the depths of my being, I cried, ‘it is good to be alive!’ I held out two trembling hands to life, and in vain silence would impose dumbness upon me henceforth! The world to which I awoke was still mysterious; but there was hope and love and God in it, and nothing else mattered. Is it not possible that our entrance into heaven may be like this experience of mine?”
“For years to come the debris of a convulsed world will beset our steps. It will require a purpose stronger than any man and worthy of all men to calm and inspirit us. A sane society whose riches are happy children, men and women, beautiful with peace and creative activity, is not going to be ordained for us. We must make it ourselves.”
“It has been said that life has treated me harshly; and sometimes I have complained in my heart because many pleasures of human experience have been withheld from me…if much has been denied me, much, very much, has been given me…”
“I trust, and I recognize the beneficence of the power which we all worship as supreme- Order, Fate, the Great Spirit, Nature, God. I recognize this power in the sun that makes all things grow and keeps life afoot. I make a friend of this indefinable force…this is my religion of optimism.”
“Sometimes, it is true, a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist as I sit alone and wait at life’s shut gate. Beyond there is light, and music, and sweet companionship; but I may not enter. Fate, silent, pitiless, bars the way…Silence sits immense upon my soul. Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, ‘there is joy is self-forgetfulness.’ So I try to make the light in others’ eyes my sun, the music in others; ears my symphony, the smile on others’ lips my happiness.”
“What is so sweet as to awake from a troubled dream and behold a beloved face smiling upon you? I love to believe that such shalle be our awakening from earth to heaven. My faith never wavers that each dear friend I ahev “lost” is a new link between this world and the happier land beyond the morn. My souls is for the moment bowed down with grief when I cease to feel the touch of their hands or hear a tender word from them; but the light of faith never fades from the sky, and I take heart again, glad they are free. I cannot understand why anyone should fear death…Suppose there are a million chances against that one that my loved ones who have gone on are alive. What of it? I will take that one chance and risk mistake, rather than let any doubts sadden their souls, and find out afterward. Since there is that one chance of immortality, I will endeavor not to cast a shadow on the joy of the departed…Certainly it is one of our sweetest experiences that when we are touched by some noble affection or pure joy, we remember the dead most tenderly, and feel more powerfully drawn to them.”
“The infinite wonders of the universe are revealed to us in exact measure as we are capable of receiving them. The keenness of our vision depends not on how much we can see, but on how much we feel.”
“I have an unshakable belief that mankind’s higher nature is on the whole still dormant. The greatest souls reveal excellencies of mind and heart which their lesser fellows possess-hidden, it is true, but there all the same.”
“How often the thought saddens me that my limitations prevent me from rendering larger service to the poor, the overladen, the ignorant? But why murmur over my bowl of longing, as the Japanese would say? I realize that mortals are only tiny drops lost in an ocean of time. The most any race or individual can do is to enter a little more deeply into the purpose of the Divine Mind..that is the best medium to transmit the current of good will through the ages.”
“I am blind and have never seen a rainbow, but I have been told of its beauty. I know that its beauty is always broken and incomplete. Never does it stretch across the heavens in full perfection. So it is with all things as we know them here below. Life itself is as imperfect and broken for every one of us as the span of a rainbow. Browning: ‘On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.’”
“Not only are the senses deceptive, but numerous usages in our language indicate that people who have five senses find it difficult to keep their functions distinct. I understand that we hear views, see tones, taste music. I am told voices have color. Tact, which I supposed to be a matter of nice perception, turns out to be a matter of taste. Certainly the language of the senses is full of contradictions, and my fellows who have five doors to their house are not more surely at home in themselves than I.”
I am such a dork, I was pretty excited that I stumbled across this book, and had to take pictures of it and try to update it as my first act as a Goodreads librarian. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out if the book truly has an ISBN number; the current profile has an Amazon number, but this deserves a more respectable ISBN number. I did write my first description, although I just copied part of the foreword. Fun!
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
“Truly I have looked into the very heart of darkness, and refused to yield to its paralyzing influence, but in spirit I am one of those who walk the morning. What if all dark, discouraging moods of the human mind come across my way as thick as the dry leaves of autumn? Other feet have traveled that road before me, and I know the desert leads to god as surely as the green, refreshing fields, and orchards.”
“If there were no life beyond this earth-life, some people I have known would gain immortality by the nobility of our memory of them. With every friend I love who has been taken into the brown bosom of the earth a part of me has been buried there; but their contribution of happiness, strength, and understanding to my being remains to sustain me in a altered world.”
“Certainly I believe that God gave us life for happiness, not misery. Humanity, I am sure, will never be made lazy or indifferent by an excess of happiness. Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. Happiness should be a means of accomplishment, like health, not an end in itself.”
“It is beyond a doubt that everyone should have time for some special delight, if only five minutes each day to seek out a lovely flower or cloud or star, or learn a verse to brighten another’s dull task. What is the use of such terrible diligence as many tire themselves out with, if they always postpone their exchanges of smiles with Beauty and Joy to cling to irksome duties and relations? Unless they admit these fair, fresh, and eternal presences into their lives as they can, they must needs shut themselves out of heaven, and a gray dust settles on all existence. That the sky is brighter than the earth means little unless the earth itself is appreciated and enjoyed. Its beauty loved gives the right to aspire to the radiance of the sunrise and stars.”
“Hold out your hands to feel the luxury of sunbeams. Press the soft blossoms against your cheek, and finger their graces of form, their delicate mutability of shape, their pliancy and freshness. Expose your face to the aerial floods that sweep the heavens, ‘inhale great draughts of space,’ wonder, wonder at the wind’s unwearied activity. Pile note on note the infinite music that flows increasingly to your soul from the tactual sonorities of a thousand branches and tumbling waters. How can the world be shriveled when this most profound, emotional sense, touch, is faithful to its service? I am sure that if a fairy bade me choose between the sense of sight and that of touch, I would not part with the warm, endearing contact of human hands…”
“When the sun of consciousness first shone upon me, behold a miracle! The stock of my young life which had perished, steeped in the waters of knowledge grew again, budded again, was sweet again with the blossoms of childhood. Down in the depths of my being, I cried, ‘it is good to be alive!’ I held out two trembling hands to life, and in vain silence would impose dumbness upon me henceforth! The world to which I awoke was still mysterious; but there was hope and love and God in it, and nothing else mattered. Is it not possible that our entrance into heaven may be like this experience of mine?”
“For years to come the debris of a convulsed world will beset our steps. It will require a purpose stronger than any man and worthy of all men to calm and inspirit us. A sane society whose riches are happy children, men and women, beautiful with peace and creative activity, is not going to be ordained for us. We must make it ourselves.”
“It has been said that life has treated me harshly; and sometimes I have complained in my heart because many pleasures of human experience have been withheld from me…if much has been denied me, much, very much, has been given me…”
“I trust, and I recognize the beneficence of the power which we all worship as supreme- Order, Fate, the Great Spirit, Nature, God. I recognize this power in the sun that makes all things grow and keeps life afoot. I make a friend of this indefinable force…this is my religion of optimism.”
“Sometimes, it is true, a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist as I sit alone and wait at life’s shut gate. Beyond there is light, and music, and sweet companionship; but I may not enter. Fate, silent, pitiless, bars the way…Silence sits immense upon my soul. Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, ‘there is joy is self-forgetfulness.’ So I try to make the light in others’ eyes my sun, the music in others; ears my symphony, the smile on others’ lips my happiness.”
“What is so sweet as to awake from a troubled dream and behold a beloved face smiling upon you? I love to believe that such shalle be our awakening from earth to heaven. My faith never wavers that each dear friend I ahev “lost” is a new link between this world and the happier land beyond the morn. My souls is for the moment bowed down with grief when I cease to feel the touch of their hands or hear a tender word from them; but the light of faith never fades from the sky, and I take heart again, glad they are free. I cannot understand why anyone should fear death…Suppose there are a million chances against that one that my loved ones who have gone on are alive. What of it? I will take that one chance and risk mistake, rather than let any doubts sadden their souls, and find out afterward. Since there is that one chance of immortality, I will endeavor not to cast a shadow on the joy of the departed…Certainly it is one of our sweetest experiences that when we are touched by some noble affection or pure joy, we remember the dead most tenderly, and feel more powerfully drawn to them.”
“The infinite wonders of the universe are revealed to us in exact measure as we are capable of receiving them. The keenness of our vision depends not on how much we can see, but on how much we feel.”
“I have an unshakable belief that mankind’s higher nature is on the whole still dormant. The greatest souls reveal excellencies of mind and heart which their lesser fellows possess-hidden, it is true, but there all the same.”
“How often the thought saddens me that my limitations prevent me from rendering larger service to the poor, the overladen, the ignorant? But why murmur over my bowl of longing, as the Japanese would say? I realize that mortals are only tiny drops lost in an ocean of time. The most any race or individual can do is to enter a little more deeply into the purpose of the Divine Mind..that is the best medium to transmit the current of good will through the ages.”
“I am blind and have never seen a rainbow, but I have been told of its beauty. I know that its beauty is always broken and incomplete. Never does it stretch across the heavens in full perfection. So it is with all things as we know them here below. Life itself is as imperfect and broken for every one of us as the span of a rainbow. Browning: ‘On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.’”
“Not only are the senses deceptive, but numerous usages in our language indicate that people who have five senses find it difficult to keep their functions distinct. I understand that we hear views, see tones, taste music. I am told voices have color. Tact, which I supposed to be a matter of nice perception, turns out to be a matter of taste. Certainly the language of the senses is full of contradictions, and my fellows who have five doors to their house are not more surely at home in themselves than I.”
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June 8, 2016La puerta abierta es un libro sobre los pensamientos más íntimos de Hellen Keller (1880-1968), una mujer sorda y ciega que a pesar de su discapacidad se graduó en la universidad y consiguió muchísimo en su vida. Es como... no sé, mal comparado, como si hubiera tenido Twitter y te metes a leer su perfil. Las cosas que cuenta son sueltas, inconexas, pero a la vez todas dentro de la misma temática de optimismo, esperanza y buenos pensamientos. Habla de tolerancia, de trabajo y esfuerzo, de ayudar a los demás, de la muerte...
Primavera y otoño; siembra y cosecha; lluvia y sol; frío invernal y calor veraniego: todo cambia. Observando la transitoriedad de todas las cosas, ¿por qué nos obsesionamos con la finalidad de la muerte? ¿Por qué no encaramos de la misma manera la vida y la muerte: sin miedo?
Este libro ha sido raro. Me ha hecho admirar muchísimo a Helen Keller, sobre todo su constante pensamiento positivo, y me ha creado una cierta ¿culpabilidad? por verlo todo con malos ojos en tantas ocasiones. Sin embargo, ella se apoyaba muchísimo en su fe y en su creencia en dios, y yo, al no compartirlo, no he podido evitar sentir que hay algo que me pierdo al leer sus pensamientos. No porque ella creyera en dios, sino por esa esperanza y ese sentimiento de que todo pasa porque alguien lo ha decidido/vela por todos que no puedo comprender, porque no lo siento.
Aun así, La puerta abierta ha sido una lectura interesante, no lo niego.
December 14, 2018
Me encanta Helen Keller y su filosofía de vida, pero este libro se limita a recopilar algunos fragmentos de otras obras suyas que se centran principalmente en la religión, la fe y Dios... Creo que para conocer a la autora es mejor leer 'La historia de mi vida' y 'El mundo en el que vivo', donde se la puede leer sin perder de vista su contexto.
December 28, 2022
A pesar de conocer sobre la vida de Hellen Keller, jamás me había detenido a leer lo que ella escribió.
Este libro fue mi primer acercamiento oficial a ella y debo decir que me llevo una gran experiencia. El libro está conformado de los pensamientos más íntimos de la autora y como tal, carece de llevar un sentido de continuidad en cada una de sus páginas.
Leerlo me remitió a la reflexión que hacemos de manera personal e interna sobre aquello que hay a nuestro alrededor, incluso se podía llegar a sentir como un diario íntimo.
Por ello creo que este no es un libro que uno deba leer si es que quiere conocer más sobre su vida; ya que, aquí hay más reflexión que una biografía. Realmente es poco lo que ella habla desde el "yo" o pasajes específicos de su vida.
Este libro fue mi primer acercamiento oficial a ella y debo decir que me llevo una gran experiencia. El libro está conformado de los pensamientos más íntimos de la autora y como tal, carece de llevar un sentido de continuidad en cada una de sus páginas.
Leerlo me remitió a la reflexión que hacemos de manera personal e interna sobre aquello que hay a nuestro alrededor, incluso se podía llegar a sentir como un diario íntimo.
Por ello creo que este no es un libro que uno deba leer si es que quiere conocer más sobre su vida; ya que, aquí hay más reflexión que una biografía. Realmente es poco lo que ella habla desde el "yo" o pasajes específicos de su vida.
November 25, 2015
عندما تقرا لهيلين فانك تقرا للحياة للحب والخير...هيلين لو كنت موجودة حتى وقتنا لكنت حمدت الله الف مرة على فقدانك حاسة السمع والنظر
فانت تملكين الكثيررررررررر
فانت تملكين الكثيررررررررر
January 21, 2021
Un canto a la vida de una mujer que superó todas las adversidades y se convirtió en un ejemplo de integridad y fortaleza. Llena de lucidez, la autobiografía se centra en la importancia de enfrentar en mundo con fortaleza y esperanza. La autora se apoya bastante en la religión para dar su mensaje, pero no se queda solo en eso, también logra un llamado universal hacia la elevación del ser humano.
January 3, 2023
Este libro es una experiencia espiritual, que debe desmenuzarse, leerse lento y con paciencia. Sin embargo, la edición carece de estructura y, al menos al leerlo en línea, no sabía cuándo concluía una idea y los párrafos se sucedían los unos a los otros sin ton ni son, sin saber cuándo Keller cambiaba de tema. Una lectura muy reflexiva, eso sí.
March 6, 2023
Pensar que escribió un libro con tal lucidez y precisión, a pesar de sus limitantes respecto a sus dos sentidos, es muy loco.
Pero no es uno de mis libros favoritos, ni tampoco el más sorprendente del mundo.
Ideas very interesantes, pero por momentos se vuelve tedioso y repetitivo, a pesar de ser un libro corto.
Pero no es uno de mis libros favoritos, ni tampoco el más sorprendente del mundo.
Ideas very interesantes, pero por momentos se vuelve tedioso y repetitivo, a pesar de ser un libro corto.
June 10, 2020
I don't find the pages.
November 18, 2020
A little bit difficult but it’s interesting!
May 23, 2021
A lovely little book of thoughts and insights from Helen Keller. All of them are rich with meaning. Reading it was for the soul what sips of broth are to the body, nourishing and warm.
June 20, 2022
Una percepción que es posible llegar
April 10, 2019
Recopilación de pensamientos y reflexiones sobre la vida desde una óptica espiritual y religiosa.
December 11, 2024
3. It was nice, but far too religious for my taste. Maybe her other works are better, cause this one felt like a scrapbook of little pieces of random thoughts.
December 28, 2018
“La única oscuridad sin luz es la noche de la ignorancia y la insensibilidad”.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews