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Perhaps my sun shines not as yours. The colors that glorify my world, the blue of the sky, the green of the fields, may not correspond exactly with those you delight in; but they are none the less color to me. The sun does not shine for my physical eyes, nor does the lightning flash, nor do the trees turn green in the spring; but they have not therefore ceased to exist; any more than the landscape is annihilated when you turn your back on it.


I understand how scarlet can differ from crimson because I know the smell of an orange is not the smell of a grapefruit. I can also conceive that colors have shades, and guess what shades are.…Odors in certain grasses fade as real to my sense as certain colors do to yours in the sun. I make use of analogies like these to enlarge my conceptions of colors. Some analogies which I draw between qualities in surface and vibration, taste and smell, are drawn by others between sight, hearing, and touch. This fact encourages me to persevere, to try to bridge the gap between the eye and the hand.

~Helen Keller (1880–1968), From “Before the Soul Dawn”