Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

The idea goes back to the American aphorist Christian Nestell Bovee, who wrote of kindness, in Thoughts, Feelings, and Fancies (1857), that it is ‘a language which the dumb can speak, and the deaf can understand.’ The saying went the rounds of newspapers in the 1860s, with the disabilities changing; a version of 1907 has ‘Kindness is a language which the blind can read, the deaf can hear, and the dumb can speak.’ The first credit to Twain found by Quote Investigator is in a syndicated column by Walter Winchell in 1942, more than thirty years after his death.

Printed on greeting cards, in schools and in charity appeals as Twain’s. Not in any of the fifteen Twain texts in the sources, and no letter, speech or notebook of his has been cited for it.

Kindness is understood by everyone, whatever their limitations; it needs no words.

Kindness, Compassion, Morality

• Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. (not found) Seneca the Younger
• To love someone means to see him as God intended him. (misattributed) Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Loving someone means giving them power to destroy you and trusting they won’t. (not found) Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The darker the night, the brighter the stars, the deeper the grief, the closer is God! (misattributed) Fyodor Dostoevsky
• To laugh often and much; … This is to have succeeded. (misattributed) Ralph Waldo Emerson

• quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/26/kindness-see

“Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” Attributed to Mark Twain. No. It grew from a line by Christian Nestell Bovee (1857), that kindness is a language the dumb can speak and the deaf understand; the shared wording is a later newspaper form. It is not Twain’s. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/kindness-language-deaf-can-hear/ (checked 21 October 2026).

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