Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Maya Angelou, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Maya Angelou quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 1025 Maya Angelou quotes for you to read and share.
Determine to live life with flair and laughter. -- Maya Angelou
Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable. Curly -- Maya Angelou
When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, 'Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.' -- Maya Angelou
If you're going to live, leave a legacy. Make a mark on the world that can't be erased. -- Maya Angelou
Open your eyes to the beauty around you, open your mind to the wonders of life, open your heart to those who love you, and always be true to yourself. -- Maya Angelou
Seek the fashion which truly fits and befits you. You will always be in fashion if you are true to yourself, and only if you are true to yourself. -- Maya Angelou
We really are 15 countries, and it's remarkable that each of us thinks we represent the real America. The Midwesterner in Kansas, the black American in Durham - both are certain they are the real American. -- Maya Angelou
If we are honest and fair, then we are known by that. If we are not, alas, we are known by that as well. What we want to do is do right, but you have to say it, you have to show it, and not stop. -- Maya Angelou
Each of us has a responsibility for being alive: one responsibility to creation, of which we are a part, another to the creator a debt we repay by trying to extend our areas of comprehension. -- Maya Angelou
Dare to let your dreams reach beyond you. -- Maya Angelou
For years, I had known that there is nothing idle about curiosity, despite the fact that the two words are often used in tandem. Curiosity fidgets, is hard to satisfy, looks for answers even before forming questions. -- Maya Angelou
My great blessing is my son, but I have daughters. I have white ones and Black ones and fat ones and thin ones and pretty ones and plain. I have gay ones and straight. I have daughters. I have Asian ones, I have Jewish ones, I have Muslim ones. -- Maya Angelou
I'm working at trying to be a Christian, and that's serious business. It's like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy - it's serious business. -- Maya Angelou
Life loves the person who dares to live it. -- Maya Angelou
I know that you that you may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. If you accept that you have been defeated, you give power to the force that is trying to defeat you. -- Maya Angelou
And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed. -- Maya Angelou
Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it allows me to survive, and better than that, to thrive with passion, compassion, and style. -- Maya Angelou
My mother's gifts of courage to me were both large and small. The latter are woven so subtly into the fabric of my psyche that I can hardly distinguish where she stops and I begin. -- Maya Angelou
This bed yawns
beneath the weight
of our absent selves. -- Maya Angelou
People feel guilty. And guilt is stymieing. Guilt immobilizes. Guilt closes the air ducts and the veins, and makes people ignorant. -- Maya Angelou
Autobiography is awfully seductive; it's wonderful. Once I got into it, I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass - the slave narrative - speaking in the first-person singular, talking about the first-person plural, always saying 'I,' meaning 'we.' -- Maya Angelou
My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness. Continue to allow humor to lighten the burden of your tender heart. -- Maya Angelou
My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return. -- Maya Angelou
If the pretties were expected to make the supreme sacrifice in order to 'belong,' what could the unattractive female do? -- Maya Angelou
When I was 8 years old I became a mute and was a mute until I was 13, and I thought of my whole body as an ear, so I can go into a crowd and sit still and absorb all sound. That talent or ability has lasted and served me until today. -- Maya Angelou
The difference between charity and philanthropy is the distance of the soul ... To be philanthropic is to give something, to be charitable is to give one's own heart. -- Maya Angelou
But from a distance. I would have left you whole and wholly for the delectation of those who wanted more and cared less. -- Maya Angelou
I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind. -- Maya Angelou
Thank you, always say thank you; it's the greatest gift you can give someone; because thank you is what you say to God. -- Maya Angelou
There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it. -- Maya Angelou
I love living. I love that I'm alive to love my age. There are many people who went to bed just as I did yesterday evening and didn't wake this morning. I love and feel very blessed that I did. I love, too, that I know a little more today than I did yesterday, or I simply know it more profoundly. -- Maya Angelou
When people see the laughing face, even if they're jealous of it, their burden is lightened. But do it first for yourself. Laugh and dare to try to love somebody, starting with yourself. -- Maya Angelou
A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent. -- Maya Angelou
What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks 'the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,'.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I'll come. -- Maya Angelou
Don't face the day until you've faced God. -- Maya Angelou
Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that modesty drops. -- Maya Angelou
The happy heart runs with the river, floats on the air, lifts to the music, soars with the eagle, hopes with the prayer. -- Maya Angelou
It's true. I can do anything and do it well because God loves me. It still humbles me. -- Maya Angelou
You must take the good that people do and put the bright light on that good, but human beings can never withstand such light without showing their shadows and warts. All mortals have their shortcomings and weaknesses. -- Maya Angelou
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise. Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear, I rise. -- Maya Angelou
If we lose love and self respect for each other,this is how we finally die -- Maya Angelou
In spite of everything that was done to me and my race, in spite of the adversity and the bitter moments, again we rise. -- Maya Angelou
If you have a song to sing, who are you not to open your mouth and sing to the world? -- Maya Angelou
He watched her every move and when she left the room, his eyes allowed her reluctantly to go. -- Maya Angelou
No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. -- Maya Angelou
Take a day to heal from the lies you've told yourself and the ones that have been told to you. -- Maya Angelou
To those who are given much, much is expected. -- Maya Angelou
I can be changed by what happened to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it. -- Maya Angelou
be a rainbow in someone else's cloude -- Maya Angelou
Be certain that you do not die without having done something wonderful for humanity. -- Maya Angelou
When someone shows you who they are believe them; the first time. -- Maya Angelou
My mother is so full of joy and life. I am her child. And that is better than being the child of anyone else in the world. -- Maya Angelou
That's the biggest gift I can give anybody: 'Wake up, be aware of who you are, what you're doing and what you can do to prevent yourself from becoming ill.' -- Maya Angelou
I think I know that I deserve better. And so I try for better. I'm never so put off that I would ever walk out of a place not having tried the best I could. -- Maya Angelou
We need to haunt the house of history and listen anew to the ancestors' wisdom. -- Maya Angelou
Even if they were society's pariahs, they were going to be angels in a marble white heaven and sit on the right hand of Jesus, the Son of God. -- Maya Angelou
I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh. -- Maya Angelou
Hope and fear cannot occupy the same space. Invite one to stay. -- Maya Angelou
I write some country music. There's a song called 'I Hope You Dance.' Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it. -- Maya Angelou
Give yourself time just to be with yourself. -- Maya Angelou
Black women have not historically stood in the pulpit, but that doesn't undermine the fact that they built the churches and maintain the pulpits. -- Maya Angelou
I encourage you to live with life. Be courageous, adventurous. Give us a tomorrow, more than we deserve. -- Maya Angelou
Your reputation is the most important thing you'll never have. Not clothes, nor money, not the big cars you may drive. If your reputation is good, you can achieve anything you want in the world. -- Maya Angelou
When members of a society wish to secure that society's rich heritage they cherish their arts and respect their artists. The esteem with which we regard the multiple cultures offered in our country enhances our possibilities for healthy survival and continued social development. -- Maya Angelou
Having courage does not mean that we are unafraid. Having courage and showing courage means we face our fears. -- Maya Angelou
The first thing I do in the morning when I awaken is say, 'Thank you, Lord!' I'm grateful to be alive, and I'm going to try to tell the truth as well as I know and tell it as eloquently as I can so that people can hear it. -- Maya Angelou
Someone was hurt before you, wronged before you, hungry before you, frightened before you, beaten before you, humiliated before you, raped before you ... yet, someone survived ... You can do anything you choose to do. -- Maya Angelou
The future is plump with promise. -- Maya Angelou
My people had used music to soothe slavery's torment or to propitiate God, or to describe the sweetness of love and the distress of lovelessness, but I knew no race could sing and dance its way to freedom. -- Maya Angelou
For Africa to me ... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place. -- Maya Angelou
Laugh and dare to try to love somebody, starting with yourself. You must love yourself first, of course, and you must protect yourself so that nobody overrides you, overrules you, or steps on you. Just say, 'Just a minute. I'm worth everything, dear.' -- Maya Angelou
I'm happy to be a writer - of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn't a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use. -- Maya Angelou
Because I was really white and because a cruel fairy stepmother, who was understandably jealous of my beauty, had turned me into a too-big Negro girl, with nappy black hair, broad feet and a space between her teeth that would hold a number-two pencil. -- Maya Angelou
At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice. -- Maya Angelou
This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before. -- Maya Angelou
we had been each other's home and center for seventeen years. He could die if he wanted to and go off to wherever dead folks go, but I, I would be left without a home. -- Maya Angelou
I was seventeen, very old, embarrassingly young, -- Maya Angelou
Every experience shapes your writing, being stuck in a car on a lonely bridge, or dancing at a prom, being the it girl on the beach, all of those things influence your life, they influence how you write, and the topics you choose to write about. -- Maya Angelou
The best candy shop a child can be left alone in, is the library -- Maya Angelou
Life is a gift, and i try to respond with grace and courtesy. -- Maya Angelou
First we became friendly, then we became sister friends. When she finally told me I was her daughter, I knew I had found home. Sitting -- Maya Angelou
I wasn't a pretty girl. I was six feet tall at 15, you know. -- Maya Angelou
He so routinely disparaged other people's importance that he didn't notice he was degrading me. -- Maya Angelou
Love heals. Heals and liberates. -- Maya Angelou
During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not. -- Maya Angelou
I dreamt we walked together along the shore. We made satisfying small talk and laughed. This morning I found sand in my shoe and a seashell in my pocket. Was I only dreaming? -- Maya Angelou
During these years in Stamps, I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare. He was my first white love. -- Maya Angelou
We do the best we can with what we know, and when we know better, we do better. -- Maya Angelou
I'm not a writer who teaches. I'm a teacher who writes. -- Maya Angelou
I believe most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise. -- Maya Angelou
Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs ... I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole. -- Maya Angelou
It's hard because people think they have something to lose and the truth is they have everything to gain in trying to love somebody. -- Maya Angelou
I will write on the pages of history what I want them to say. I will be myself. I will speak my own name. -- Maya Angelou
Sometimes all you need in love is to make each other happy, to make each other laugh. So long as you can still do that ten years down the line then I think you're gold. Never let the laughter slip from your relationship. -- Maya Angelou
Troubles are a blessing that force you to change, to believe. -- Maya Angelou
She said, 'No, you learned that you have power - power and determination. I love you and I am proud of you. With those two things, you can go anywhere and everywhere. -- Maya Angelou
They who have health have hope; and they who have hope, have everything. -- Maya Angelou
Life loves the liver of it. You must live and life will be good to you. -- Maya Angelou
My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God - I thank God every time I think of it - I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult. -- Maya Angelou
Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence - neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish - it is an imponderably valuable gift. -- Maya Angelou
I agreed a long time ago, I would not live at any cost. If I am moved or forced away from what I think is the right thing, I will not do it. -- Maya Angelou
Don't get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that - if you dare. But get older because it's fun! -- Maya Angelou
At one time, you could sit on the Rue de la Paix in Paris or at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv or in Medina and you could see a person come in, black, white, it didn't matter. You said, 'That's an American' because there's a readiness to smile and to talk to people. -- Maya Angelou
I am always talking about the human condition and about American society in particular: what it is like to be human, what makes us weep, what makes us fall and stumble and somehow rise and go on from darkness into darkness and that darkness carpeted. -- Maya Angelou
Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? -- Maya Angelou
The whites were really brutishly ignorant, blitheringly, so they killed people sometimes - just came into the African-American community and maimed people because they didn't agree with God's choice for the colors of the people's skin. -- Maya Angelou
He was a simple man who had no inferiority complex about his lack of education, and even more amazing no superiority complex because he had succeeded despite that lack. -- Maya Angelou
All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us all that we are more alike than we are unlike. -- Maya Angelou
Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: 'I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.' -- Maya Angelou
The only thing is, people have to develop courage. It is most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you can't practice any other virtues consistently. -- Maya Angelou
You don't want modesty, you want humility. Humility comes from inside out. It says someone was here before me and I'm here because I've been paid for. I have something to do and I will do that because I'm paying for someone else who has yet to come. -- Maya Angelou
Not everything you do is going to be a masterpiece, but you get art there and you try and sometimes it really happens. The other times you're just stretching your soul. -- Maya Angelou
My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring, still. -- Maya Angelou
When I was asked to do something good, I often say yes, I'll try, yes, I'll do my best. And part of that is believing, if God loves me, if God made everything from leaves to seals and oak trees, then what is it I can't do? -- Maya Angelou
That's what you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you've got. I've told you many times, 'Cant do is like Dont Care.' Neither of them have a home. -- Maya Angelou
We love and lose in China,
we weep on England's moors,
and laugh and moan in Guinea,
and thrive on Spanish shores.
We seek success in Finland,
are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major we're the same. -- Maya Angelou
Poetry and music are the best at the highest level of the human mind. Out of poetry, out of their need for poetry, human beings have developed the idea of God. And so when we sing, when we dance, when we speak poetry we are speaking out of God's mouth, each other out of the music from God's heart. -- Maya Angelou
Life sometimes gives you a second chance. -- Maya Angelou
Miss Kirwin was that rare educator who was in love with information. I will always believe that her love of teaching came not so much from her liking for students but from her desire to make sure that some of the things she knew would find repositories so that they could be shared again. -- Maya Angelou
The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education. -- Maya Angelou
Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, 'I'm not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.' Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, 'Yes, I deserve it.' -- Maya Angelou
The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you - black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight. -- Maya Angelou
If you were the President of the United States or the Queen of England - you couldn't have a person who would be more protective than my mother was for me. Which meant really that I could dare to do all sorts of things. -- Maya Angelou
But still, like air, I'll rise -- Maya Angelou
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
Into your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning. -- Maya Angelou
I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool - and I'm not any of those - to say that I don't write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues. -- Maya Angelou
She liberated me from a society that would have had me think of myself as the lower of the low. She liberated me to life. And from that time to this time, I have taken life by the lapels and I have said, "I'm with you, kid. -- Maya Angelou
I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, 'No. No, I'm finished. Bye.' And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won't do that. -- Maya Angelou
It is imperative that young white men and women study the black American history. It is imperative that blacks and whites study the Asian American history. -- Maya Angelou
To know and not to do is in fact not to know. We need to be active instruments against evil. We need to do. -- Maya Angelou
If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. -- Maya Angelou
I find it very difficult to let a friend or beloved go into that country of no return. I answer the heroic question, "Death, where is thy sting?" with "It is here in my heart, and my mind, and my memories. -- Maya Angelou
Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances. -- Maya Angelou
Those who have something to say accept the fact that that's lonely. One already knows that there will be adversaries. -- Maya Angelou
Look for the beauty in things. -- Maya Angelou
I have heard it said that winter, too, will pass, that spring is a sign that summer is due at last. See, all we have to do is hang on. -- Maya Angelou
Each child belongs to all of us and they will bring us a tomorrow in direct relation to the responsibility we have shown to them. -- Maya Angelou
There is an intimate laughter to be found only among friends -- Maya Angelou
In an unfamiliar culture, it is wise to offer no innovations, no suggestions, or lessons. -- Maya Angelou
The truth is very important. No matter how negative it is, it is imperative that you learn the truth, not necessarily the facts. I mean, that, that can come, but facts can stand in front of the truth and almost obscure the truth. It is imperative that students learn the truth of our history. -- Maya Angelou
You saw me bludgeoned by circumstance.
Lost, injured, hurt by chance.
I screamed to the heavens ... loudly screamed ...
Trying to change our nightmares into dreams ... -- Maya Angelou
I believe that every person is born with talent. -- Maya Angelou
At the end of the day people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel. -- Maya Angelou
Until blacks and whites see each other as brother and sister, we will not have parity. It's very clear. -- Maya Angelou
We are only as blind as we want to be. -- Maya Angelou
There is a kind of strength that is almost frightening in Black women. It's as if a steel rod runs right through the head down to the feet. -- Maya Angelou
Blacks concede that hurrawing, jibing, jiving, signifying, disrespecting, cursing, even outright insults might be acceptable under particular conditions, but aspersions cast against one's family call for immediate attack. -- Maya Angelou
Take a month and show some kindness for the folks who thought that blindness was an illness that affected eyes alone. -- Maya Angelou
The public library building, in my view, is just a little lower than the church, the cathedral, the temple, the synagogue and the mosque. Within those walls and along those stacks, I have found security and assurance. -- Maya Angelou
I should have known better than to lie to the government. People always said Uncle Sam would spend a thousand dollars to get you if you stole a three-cent stamp from him. He was more revengeful than God. I -- Maya Angelou
Today, the first & last of every Tree/ Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River. -- Maya Angelou
there are times when no one is right, and sometimes among family and children, no one can admit that there is no right, and that maybe at the same time there is no wrong. But in this case I was wrong and I appreciate Vivian Baxter for being big enough to accept my apology. -- Maya Angelou
Language. I loved it. And for a long time I would think of myself, of my whole body, as an ear. -- Maya Angelou
I suggest that the great art belongs to all people, all the time
that indeed it is made for the people, by the people, to the people. -- Maya Angelou
The plague of racism is insidious, entering into our minds as smoothly and quietly and invisibly as floating airborne microbes enter into our bodies to find lifelong purchase in our bloodstreams. -- Maya Angelou
We must be warriors in the struggle against ignorance -- Maya Angelou
Home is that youthful region where a child is the only real living inhabitant. Parents, siblings, and neighbors are mysterious apparitions who come, go, and do strange unfathomable thing in and around the child, the region's only enfranchised citizen. -- Maya Angelou
Hope is born again in the faces of children. -- Maya Angelou
You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right. -- Maya Angelou
Still I'll rise. -- Maya Angelou
You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody. -- Maya Angelou
Our people are in need of truth and I have tried and will continue to try to speak only truth to the people. -- Maya Angelou
Style is as unique and nontransferable and perfectly personal as a fingerprint. It is wise to take the time to develop one's own way of being, increasing those things one does well and eliminating the elements in one's character which can hinder and diminish the good personality. -- Maya Angelou
No one can take the place of a friend, no one. -- Maya Angelou
I had read a Tale of Two Cities and found it up to my standards as a romantic novel. She opened the first page and I heard poetry for the first time in my life ... her voice slid in and curved down trough and over the words. She was nearly singing. -- Maya Angelou
Girl, you're going to be all right. You haven't forgotten the essentials. You know about defending yourself. All you have to do now is remember ... sometimes you have to defend yourself from yourself. -- Maya Angelou
I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it. -- Maya Angelou
You can't forgive without loving. And I don't mean sentimentality. I don't mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, 'I forgive. I'm finished with it.' -- Maya Angelou
I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best - I mean, when I'm at my best - of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything. -- Maya Angelou
I would welcome a friendship with Lynne Hinton. I would welcome an invitation to sit down at her table, but mostly I would welcome her next book. -- Maya Angelou
If we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls. -- Maya Angelou
If you have done the best you can do and if you have gotten all you could extract from something, you have given all you had to give, then the time has come when you can do no more than say thank you and move on. -- Maya Angelou
When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young. -- Maya Angelou
Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait. -- Maya Angelou
Living well is an art that can be developed: a love of life and ability to take great pleasure from small offerings and assurance that the world owes you nothing and that every gift is exactly that, a gift. -- Maya Angelou
Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflicts than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity. Until -- Maya Angelou
I want to be a good human being. I'm doing my best, and I'm working at it. -- Maya Angelou
I am not competing with anyone other than myself. I want to be excellent at whatever I do. -- Maya Angelou
I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I'm praying, but also something wonderful happens to me. I'm grateful that I'm heard. -- Maya Angelou
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise. -- Maya Angelou
Just like moons and suns, With certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise. -- Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies.
You may trod me in the very dirt, but still like dust, I'll rise. -- Maya Angelou
We can only know where we're going if we know where we've been. -- Maya Angelou
It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning. -- Maya Angelou
I made the decision to quit show business. Give up the skintight dresses and manicured smiles. The false concern over sentimental lyrics. I would never again work to make people smile inanely and would take on the responsibility of making them think. -- Maya Angelou
Cotton rows crisscross the world
And dead-tired nights of yearning
Thunderbolts on leather strops
And all my body burning
Sugar cane reach up to God
And every baby crying
Shame a blanket of my night
And all my days are dying -- Maya Angelou
Try to live your life in a way that you will not regret years of useless virtue and inertia and timidity. -- Maya Angelou
To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow. -- Maya Angelou
I want to be representative of my race-the human race. I have a chance to show how kind we can be, how intelligent and generous we can be ... -- Maya Angelou
It's wonderful that whenever Patsy Cline's name is mentioned, people's voices fall and they become right sentimental. And, rightly so. -- Maya Angelou
Love recognizes no barriers. -- Maya Angelou
Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us. We need hours of aimless wandering or spates of time sitting on park benches, observing the mysterious world of ants and the canopy of treetops. -- Maya Angelou
It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength. -- Maya Angelou
It is sad but true that sometimes we need the tragedy to help us to see how human we are and how we are more alike than we are different. -- Maya Angelou
I created myself. I have taught myself so much. -- Maya Angelou
Let choice whisper in your ear and love murmur in your heart. Be ready. Here comes life. -- Maya Angelou
I could fall in love with a sumo wrestler if he told stories and made me laugh. Obviously, it would be easier if someone was African-American and lived next door and went to the same church. Because then I wouldn't have to translate. -- Maya Angelou
Achievement brings its own anticlimax. -- Maya Angelou
Achievement brings it own anticlimax. -- Maya Angelou
under my eye, but not my thumb. -- Maya Angelou
There have been people in my life who meant me well, taught me valuable lessons, and others who have meant me ill and have given me ample notification that my world is not meant to be all peaches and cream. -- Maya Angelou
You have to develop ways so that you can take up for yourself, and then you take up for someone else. And so sooner or later, you have enough courage to really stand up for the human race and say, 'I'm a representative.' -- Maya Angelou
And I not only have the right to stand up for myself, but I have the responsibility. I can't ask somebody else to stand up for me if I won't stand up for myself. And once you stand up for yourself, you'd be surprised that people say, "Can I be of help?" -- Maya Angelou
Develop enough courage so that you can stand up for yourself and then stand up for somebody else. -- Maya Angelou
When we cast our bread upon the waters we can presume that someone downstream whose face we will never know will benefit from our action, as we who are downstream from another will profit from the grantor's gift. -- Maya Angelou
You can't get too high for somebody to bring you down. -- Maya Angelou
I had to trust life, since I was young enough to believe that life loved the person who dared to live it. I -- Maya Angelou
First best is falling in love. Second best is being in love. Least best is falling out of love. But any of it is better than never having been in love. -- Maya Angelou
They may have forgotten how badly they treated you, or they may pretend that they have forgotten. But watch: They will come back to you. -- Maya Angelou
All riddles are blues, / And all blues are sad, / And I'm only mentioning / Some blues I've had. -- Maya Angelou
I found it hard to think of leaving my books. They had been my elevators out of the midden, and to whom could I entrust such close friends? The -- Maya Angelou
My son is the best thing that ever happened to me. And through me - to a lot of people. -- Maya Angelou
I have great respect for the past. If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going. I have respect for the past, but I'm a person of the moment. I'm here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I'm at, then I go forward to the next place. -- Maya Angelou
The fog wasn't simply the steamy vapors off the bay caught and penned in by hills, but a soft breath of anonymity that shrouded and cushioned the bashful traveler. -- Maya Angelou
There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing. -- Maya Angelou
If you know that youth is dying on the run and my daughter trades dope stories with your son we'd better see what all our fearing and our jeering and our crying and our lying brought about. Take Time Out. -- Maya Angelou
A black person grows up in this country - and in many places - knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone. -- Maya Angelou
Only equals make friends, every other relationship is contrived and off balance. -- Maya Angelou
At our best, we're all teachers -- Maya Angelou
If God put the rainbows right in the clouds themselves, each one of us in the direst and dullest and most dreaded and dreary moments can see a possibility of hope ... Each one of us has the chance to be a rainbow in somebody's cloud. -- Maya Angelou
Don't do anything that you think is wrong. Just do what you think is right, and then be ready to back it up even with your life. -- Maya Angelou
When teachers or people in authority put me down or in one way or another tried to make me feel less than equal to what they thought I should be - my mother was on my side. It was amazing. -- Maya Angelou
We spend precious hours fearing the inevitable. It would be wise to use that time adoring our families, cherishing our friends and living our lives. -- Maya Angelou
I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being. -- Maya Angelou
I couldn't tell fact from fiction,
Or if the dream was true
My only sure prediction
In this world was you.
I'd touch your features inchly. Beard love and dared the cost, The sented spiel reeled me unreal And I found my senses lost. -- Maya Angelou
Whenever something went wrong when I was young - if I had a pimple or if my hair broke - my mom would say, 'Sister mine, I'm going to make you some soup.' And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger. -- Maya Angelou
Take the blinders from your vision take the padding from your ears and confess you've heard me crying and admit you've seen my tears. -- Maya Angelou
We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay - and rise! -- Maya Angelou
Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good. -- Maya Angelou
Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I'll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, 'I'd like to write about that.' Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem. -- Maya Angelou
If somebody is really trying to take your head off with a baseball bat - I don't know how long you're supposed to stand there and turn the other cheek, so he or she can get a better angle at taking your head off. -- Maya Angelou
Be courageous, but not foolhardy. Walk proud as you are. -- Maya Angelou
I'm a feminist. I've been a female for a long time now. It'd be stupid not to be on my own side. -- Maya Angelou
Love builds up the broken wall and straightens the crooked path.
Love keeps the stars in the firmament and imposes rhythm on the ocean tides.
Each of us is created of it and I suspect each of us was created for it -- Maya Angelou
Mother's life flowed radiant. Flourescent-tipped waves on incoming tides. -- Maya Angelou
Try to be all you can be to be the best human being you can be. Try to be that in your church, in your temple. Try to be that in your classroom. Do it because it is right to do. -- Maya Angelou
I know some people might think it odd - unworthy even - for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people's poet so I write for the people. -- Maya Angelou
Being free is being able to accept people for what they are, and not try to understand all they are or be what they are. -- Maya Angelou
Most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That's the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don't grow up. -- Maya Angelou
Hanging softly over the black Singer sewing machine, it looked like magic, and when people saw me wearing it they were going to run up to me and say, "Marguerite, forgive us, please, we didn't know who you were," and I would answer generously, "No, you couldn't have known. Of course I forgive you. -- Maya Angelou
Modesty is a learned affectation. It's no good. Humility is great, because humility says, 'There was someone before me. I'm following in somebody's footsteps.' -- Maya Angelou
Would you deny your son or your daughter the ecstasy of finding someone to love? -- Maya Angelou
The sadness of the women's movement is that they don't allow the necessity of love. See, I don't personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed. -- Maya Angelou
Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently. -- Maya Angelou
Don't let the incidents which take place in life bring you low. And certainly don't whine. You can be brought low, that's OK, but don't be reduced by them. Just say, 'That's life.' -- Maya Angelou
Like most children, I thought if I could face the worst danger voluntarily, and triumph, I would forever have power over it. -- Maya Angelou
Hope for the best, be prepared for the worse. Life is shocking, but you must never appear to be shocked. For no matter how bad it is it could be worse and no matter how good it is it could be better. -- Maya Angelou
The children to whom we read simple stories may or may not show gratitude, but each boon we give strengthens the pillars of the world. -- Maya Angelou
Time itself is an individual gift. It is wise to cherish it carefully and give it away generously. -- Maya Angelou
The"b" word and the "n" word are like poison, whether you take poison from a vial or pour it into Bavarian crystal, it is still poison. -- Maya Angelou
There are those who say that poets should use her and his art to change the world. I'd agree with that, but I think everybody should do that. I think the chef and the baker and the candlestick maker - I think everybody should be hoping to make it a better world. -- Maya Angelou
Jealousy is conceived only in insecurity and must be nourished in fear. -- Maya Angelou
Be the best of anything you get into. If you want to be a whore, it's your life. Be a damn good one. Don't chippy at anything. Anything worth having is worth working for.'
It was her version of Polonius' speech to Laertes. With that wisdom in my pouch, I was to go out and buy my future. -- Maya Angelou
You may be pretty or plain, heavy or thin, gay or straight, poor or rich. But remember this: In an election, every voice is equally powerful
don't underestimate your vote. Voting is the great equalizer. -- Maya Angelou
We are not our brother's keeper we are our brother and we are our sister. We must look past complexion and see community. -- Maya Angelou
I have a feeling that I make a very good friend, and I'm a good mother, and a good sister, and a good citizen. I am involved in life itself - all of it. And I have a lot of energy and a lot of nerve. -- Maya Angelou
The problem I have with haters is that they see my glory, but they don't know my story ... -- Maya Angelou
I was going to look like one of the sweet little white girls who were everybody's dream of what was right with the world. -- Maya Angelou
Living a life is like constructing a building: if you start wrong, you'll end wrong. -- Maya Angelou
Ritie, don't worry 'cause you ain't pretty. Plenty pretty women I seen digging ditches or worse. You smart. I swear to God, I rather you have a good mind than a cute behind. -- Maya Angelou
When I try to describe myself to God I say, "Lord, remember me? Black? Female? Six-foot tall? The writer?" And I almost always get God's attention. -- Maya Angelou
If I could give you one thought, it would be to lift someone up. Lift a stranger up
lift her up. I would ask you, mother and father, brother and sister, lovers, mother and daughter, father and son, lift someone. The very idea of lifting someone up will lift you, as well. -- Maya Angelou
I write because I am a Black woman, listening attentively to her people. -- Maya Angelou
It's very important to know the neighbor next door and the people down the street and the people in another race. -- Maya Angelou
I'm very, very serious - I'm serious enough not to take myself too seriously. That means I can be completely wedded to the moment. But when I leave that moment, I want to be completely wedded to the next moment. -- Maya Angelou
We grow despite the horror that we feed upon our own tomorrow. We grow. -- Maya Angelou
The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear. -- Maya Angelou
No one has ever become poor from giving. -- Maya Angelou
Step off the road. Build yourself a brand new path. -- Maya Angelou
Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication. -- Maya Angelou
I come as one, but stand as 10,000. -- Maya Angelou
Each of us has that right, that possibility, to invent ourselves daily. If a person does not invent herself, she will be invented. So, to be bodacious enough to invent ourselves is wise. -- Maya Angelou
We are missing Michael.
But we do know we had him, and we are the world. -- Maya Angelou
He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his. -- Maya Angelou
The epitome of sophistication is utter simplicity. -- Maya Angelou
Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery. -- Maya Angelou
To become wondrously successful and to sustain that success in any profession, one must be willing to relinquish many pleasures and be ready to postpone gratification. -- Maya Angelou
Nothing can dim the light which shines from within. -- Maya Angelou
Hatred is the ballast of the rock which lies upon our necks and underfoot. -- Maya Angelou
I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. -- Maya Angelou
It is imperative that a woman keep her sense of humor intact and at the ready. She must see, even if only in secret, that she is the funniest, looniest woman in her world, which she should also see as being the most absurd world of all times. -- Maya Angelou
I went further than forgiving the clerk, I accepted her as a fellow victim of the same puppeteer. On -- Maya Angelou
You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don't make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off of you. -- Maya Angelou
I like to go back and read poems that I wrote fifty years ago, twenty years ago, and sometimes they surprise me - I didn't know I knew that then. Or maybe I didn't know it then, and I know more now. -- Maya Angelou
You might encounter defeats but you must never be defeated ... Love a lot. Laugh a lot at the silliest things and be very serious ... love life. -- Maya Angelou
The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance. -- Maya Angelou
I always felt, if I can get to a library, I'll be OK. -- Maya Angelou
I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me. -- Maya Angelou
I was very blessed to have family and friends, but particularly family, who told me I was not only all right, I was just right, so I believe that my brain is a good one, and it's lasting me very well. -- Maya Angelou
Poetry is music written for the human voice. -- Maya Angelou
I speak to the Black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition
about what we can endure, dream, fail at and survive. -- Maya Angelou
I also wear a hat or a very tightly pulled head tie when I write. I suppose I hope by doing that I will keep my brains from seeping out of my scalp and running in great gray blobs down my neck, into my ears, and over my face. -- Maya Angelou
One must know not just how to accept a gift, but with what grace to share it. -- Maya Angelou
When I cook for my family on Christmas, I make feijoada, a South American dish of roasted and smoked meats like ham, pork, beef, lamb, and bacon - all served with black beans and rice. It's festive but different. -- Maya Angelou
Original thinking migrates each day in search of nourishment. -- Maya Angelou
I think I have had so much blessing - I've had my brother, who was brilliant - I think my family came closest to making a genius when they made my brother - Bailey was just all of that. He loved me. -- Maya Angelou
I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'. -- Maya Angelou
Of course I could drive. Idiots and lunatics drove cars. Why not the brilliant Marguerite Johnson? -- Maya Angelou
we drove up to the three-shaded house, -- Maya Angelou
Bitterness is like cancer. It eats ... -- Maya Angelou
The woman who truly intends to live a good life is already living phenomenally since intent is part of the achievement. -- Maya Angelou
Just as hope rings through laughter, it can also shine through tears. -- Maya Angelou
The black kids, the poor white kids, Spanish-speaking kids, and Asian kids in the US - in the face of everything to the contrary, they still bop and bump, shout and go to school somehow. Their optimism gives me hope. -- Maya Angelou
Whenever I want to laugh, I read a wonderful book, 'Children's Letters to God.' You can open it anywhere. One I read recently said, 'Dear God, thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.' -- Maya Angelou
In a magazine, one can get - from cover to cover - 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it. -- Maya Angelou
Laugh ... It's the sweetest thing one can do for oneself and one's fellow human beings. -- Maya Angelou
I work very hard, and I play very hard. I'm grateful for life. And I live it - I believe life loves the liver of it. I live it. -- Maya Angelou
The customs are as formalised as an eighteenth-century minuet, and a child at the race's knee learns the moves and twirls by osmosis and observation. -- Maya Angelou
You're not serious; you're boring as hell. -- Maya Angelou
One of the problems we have as writers is we don't take ourselves seriously while writing; being serious is setting aside a time and saying if it comes, good; if it doesn't come, good, I'll just sit here. -- Maya Angelou
I'm grateful to be of use. I will not be misused or abused, but I will be of use to anybody. -- Maya Angelou
Forgiveness. It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody. You are relieved of carrying that burden of resentment. You really are lighter. You feel lighter. You just drop that. -- Maya Angelou
It's still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out. -- Maya Angelou
I've learned that forgiving is one of the greatest gifts that I can give myself. -- Maya Angelou
Because of technological breakthroughs, the society will need fewer and fewer unskilled laborers. -- Maya Angelou
No sun outlasts its sunset, but will rise again and bring the dawn. -- Maya Angelou
We will sometimes have defeats in life but you can have defeats without being defeated, you could fail without being a failure. When you see failure and defeats as merely part of the process to get to when. -- Maya Angelou
The saying that people who have nothing to do become busybodies is not the only truth. Excitement is a drug, and people whose lives are filled with violence are always wondering where the next 'fix' is coming from. -- Maya Angelou
Every person under the sound of my voice is a soldier. You are either fighting for your freedom or betraying the fight for freedom or enlisted in the army to deny somebody else freedom. - Malcom X -- Maya Angelou
The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart. -- Maya Angelou
I find relief from the questions only when I concede that I am not obliged to know everything. I remind myself it is sufficient to know what I know, and that what I know, may not always be true. -- Maya Angelou
It is important that we learn humility, which says there was someone else before me who paid for me. My responsibility is to prepare myself so that I can pay for someone else who is yet to come. -- Maya Angelou
Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible. -- Maya Angelou
Raising kids is like nailing Jell-O to a tree. -- Maya Angelou
Reality has changed chameleonlike before my eyes so many times that I have learned, or am learning, to trust almost anything except what appears to be so. -- Maya Angelou
[Librarians] study their field with as much determination and as much delight as open-heart surgeons. -- Maya Angelou
I met that lovely Detroit lady and thought my time had come But just before I said "I do" I said "I got to run" and started to Pickin em up and layin em down, Pickin em up and layin em down, Pickin em up and layin em down, gettin to the next town Baby. -- Maya Angelou
We need much less than we think we need. -- Maya Angelou
America was aptly described by George Bernard Shaw, who said that it was 'the only country which had gone from barbarism to decadence without once passing through civilization.' Guy -- Maya Angelou
We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do. -- Maya Angelou
I certainly do not adore the writer's discipline. I have lost lovers, endangered friendships, and blundered into eccentricity, impelled by a concentration which usually is to be found only in the minds of people about to be executed in the next half hour. -- Maya Angelou
Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that's all. So we direct our values to material things. -- Maya Angelou
When things were very bad his soul just crawled behind his heart and curled up and went to sleep -- Maya Angelou
Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off you. -- Maya Angelou
Youthful cynicism is sad to observe, because it indicates not so much knowledge learned from bitter experiences as insufficient trust even to attempt the future. -- Maya Angelou
Courage allows the successful woman to fail - and to learn powerful lessons from the failure - so that in the end, she didn't fail at all. -- Maya Angelou
I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they're stones that don't matter. As long as you're breathing, it's never too late to do some good. -- Maya Angelou
It is better to control oneself, if one can, and not hit back. But on certain occasions, it is imperative to defend oneself. I don't think it's fair to ask anybody not to defend herself or himself. -- Maya Angelou
Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope. -- Maya Angelou
In order to win, we pay with energy and effort and discipline. If we lose, we pay in disappointment, discontent, and lack of fulfillment. -- Maya Angelou
I believe everything is energy. I believe that the meal you serve yourself, you prepare, is energy. And if you serve it to your family, it's your gift of energy to them. -- Maya Angelou
Love heals. Heals and liberates. I use the word love, not meaning sentimentality, but a condition so strong that it may be that which holds the stars in their heavenly positions and that which causes the blood to flow orderly in our veins. -- Maya Angelou
Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women. -- Maya Angelou
Rainbows are people whose lives are bright, shining examples for others. -- Maya Angelou
I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone.
People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. -- Maya Angelou
She comprehended the perversity of life, that in the struggle lies the joy. -- Maya Angelou
I was born in St. Louis but lived there just for a few minutes in my life. -- Maya Angelou
I'm always disappointed when people don't live up to their potential. I know that a number of people look down on themselves and consequently on everybody who looks like them. But that, too, can change. -- Maya Angelou
That knowledge humbles me, melts my bones, closes my ears, and makes my teeth rock loosely in their gums. And it also liberates me. I am a big bird winging over high mountains, down into serene valleys. I am ripples of waves on silver seas. I'm a spring leaf trembling in anticipation. -- Maya Angelou
Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between. -- Maya Angelou
One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can't swim anymore and had the swimming pool covered over. Now it's what I call the dance pavilion, and so I and my friends sit out and put music on and watch people dance. -- Maya Angelou
I like to speak on matters which matter to human beings, and almost everything matters to human beings. -- Maya Angelou
In the flush of love's light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free. -- Maya Angelou
Ignorance is a terrible thing. It causes families to lose their center and causes people to lose their control. Ignorance knows no binds. Old people, young people, middle-aged, black, white, can all be ignorant. -- Maya Angelou
What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain. -- Maya Angelou
Water isn't shaped like a river or ocean; it mists invisibly against metal and glass -- Maya Angelou
It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of us has it. That is the truth of it. -- Maya Angelou
Seek patience and passion in equal amounts. Patience alone will not build the temple. Passion alone will destroy its walls. -- Maya Angelou
If more Africans had eaten missionaries, the continent would be in better shape -- Maya Angelou
A Conceit
Give me your hand
Make room for me
to lead and follow
you
beyond this rage of poetry.
Let others have
the privacy of
touching words
and love of loss
of love.
For me
Give me your hand. -- Maya Angelou
Every December, I host a tree-trimming party. I serve chili with cornbread and lots of good wine. It's a wonderful party, and it shows how much adults like to play. -- Maya Angelou
In order to avoid this bitter end, we would all have to be born again, and born with the knowledge of alternatives. Even then? -- Maya Angelou
I want you to learn that you cannot have anything without working for it. The only way you can be taken advantage of is if you think you can get something for nothing. -- Maya Angelou
Everyone grows old but not everyone grows up. -- Maya Angelou
Encouragement to all women is - let us try to offer help before we have to offer therapy. That is to say, let's see if we can't prevent being ill by trying to offer a love of prevention before illness. -- Maya Angelou
Eating is so intimate. It's very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you're inviting a person into your life. -- Maya Angelou
Let nothing dim the light that shines from within -- Maya Angelou
The love of the family, the love of one person, can heal. It heals the scars left by society. A massive, powerful society. -- Maya Angelou
Hadn't I, always, but ever and ever, thought that life was just one great risk for the living? -- Maya Angelou
I keep on dying, Because I love to live -- Maya Angelou
Having courage does not mean we are unafraid. -- Maya Angelou
If funkytown was a trailerpark, this guy would be a double-wide. -- Maya Angelou
Life loves the liver of it. -- Maya Angelou
But the Russian writers would be packed away in mothballs and stored in our basement. I would savor the idea of Dostoevsky's, Tolstoy's and Gorki's volumes molding in the dank cellar, wisps of camphor and odors of wet earth floating above them. I -- Maya Angelou
Still, when it looked like the sun wasn't going to shine anymore, God put a rainbow in the clouds. -- Maya Angelou
If you want what you're saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody's life. Your own, first. -- Maya Angelou
You don't have to tell everything you know, but let what you do say be the truth as you understand it. -- Maya Angelou
I do not think of myself as unusually creative. I think we all come from the creator, each human being streaming with the glory. So each one of us is creative. -- Maya Angelou
In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours.
In all the world, there is no love for you like mine. -- Maya Angelou
I speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English. -- Maya Angelou
There is an amazing something in the American psyche which speaks about courage, and it says, 'Yes I can,' ... Yes, we will overcome it all because we have the spirit to do so. -- Maya Angelou
I make writing as much a part of my life as I do eating or listening to music. -- Maya Angelou
I looked up the way I was going and back the way I come and since I wasn't satisfied I stepped off and [found] me a new path. -- Maya Angelou
I'm a serious aficionada of country music - Reba McEntire, Toby Keith, Montgomery Gentry. I've even written some songs. They haven't done anything of mine yet. But it's only a matter of time. -- Maya Angelou
If you happen to fall in love with someone in another race, it's more difficult, because you have to translate yourself. -- Maya Angelou
I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare. -- Maya Angelou
Anything that works against you can also work for you once you understand the Principle of Reverse. -- Maya Angelou
For a person who grew up in the '30s and '40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, 'Here I am, read me.' Over time I have learned I am at my best around books. -- Maya Angelou
The child gives, because the body can, and the mind of the violator cannot. -- Maya Angelou
You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. -- Maya Angelou
I know something better is on the road for me. -- Maya Angelou
Each of us, famous or infamous, is a role model for somebody, and if we aren't, we should behave as though we are
cheerful, kind, loving, courteous. Because you can be sure someone is watching and taking deliberate and diligent notes. -- Maya Angelou
If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent. -- Maya Angelou
He was away in a mystery, locked in the enigma that young Southern Black boys start to unravel, start to try to unravel, from seven years old to death. The humorless puzzle of inequality and hate. -- Maya Angelou
You don't need another person, place or thing to make you whole. God already did that. Your job is to know it. -- Maya Angelou
I sustain myself with the love of family. -- Maya Angelou
I became the kind of parent my mother was to me. -- Maya Angelou
It seemed terribly unfair to have a toothache and a headache and have to bear at the same time the heavy burden of Blackness. -- Maya Angelou
Although I had no regrets, I told myself sadly that growing up was not the painless process one would have thought it to be. -- Maya Angelou
Had I not had my grandmother, who dared to be my rainbow in the clouds, I would have been just another sexually abused barefoot black girl on the roads of Arkansas. -- Maya Angelou
Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency -- Maya Angelou
The nice thing about HOPE is that you can give it to someone else, someone who needs it even more than you do, and you will find you have not given yours away at all. -- Maya Angelou
The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are. -- Maya Angelou
Listen carefully to what country people called mother wit. That in those homely sayings was couched the collective wisdom of generations. When -- Maya Angelou
Some decide that happiness and glee are the same thing, they are not. When we choose happiness we accept the responsibility to lighten the load of someone else and to be a light on the path of another who may be walking in darkness. -- Maya Angelou
I read the Bible to myself; I'll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is. -- Maya Angelou
Though I do manage to mumble around in about seven or eight languages, English remains the most beautiful of languages. It will do anything. -- Maya Angelou
If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities. -- Maya Angelou
Some critics will write 'Maya Angelou is a natural writer' - which is right after being a natural heart surgeon. -- Maya Angelou
Hell, girl, everybody feels sorry for you, but nobody owes you a damn thing. -- Maya Angelou
I'm young as morning
and fresh as dew.
Everybody loves me
and so do you. -- Maya Angelou
You forgive yourself for every failure because you are trying to do the right thing. God knows that and you know it. Nobody else may know it. -- Maya Angelou
There are some nights when sleep plays coy, aloof and disdainful. And all the wiles that I employ to win its service to my side are useless as wounded pride, and much more painful. -- Maya Angelou
The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free. -- Maya Angelou
The woman who survives intact and happy must be at once tender and tough. -- Maya Angelou
When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich. -- Maya Angelou
Shelter Network's programs and services are a rainbow in the clouds for homeless children and adults. -- Maya Angelou
We can be better, we can be wiser, we can be more kind. Yes we have to change. We have to grow up and stop acting like 10 years old. Yes there is much to do, much to see, much to go into. -- Maya Angelou
I think that that's the wisest thing - to prevent illness before we try to cure something. -- Maya Angelou
We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men ... We are who we are because they were who they were. It's wise to know where you come from, who called your name. -- Maya Angelou
We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike. -- Maya Angelou
Miss Glory went on to say that the doctor had taken all her lady organs. I reasoned that a pig organ's included the lungs, heart, and liver, so if Mrs. Cullinan was walking around without those essentials, it explained why she drank alcohol out of unmarked bottles. She was keeping herself embalmed. -- Maya Angelou
Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake. -- Maya Angelou
The city became for me the ideal of what I wanted to be as a grown-up. Friendly, but never gushing, cool but not frigid or distant, distinguished without the awful stiffness. -- Maya Angelou
I'm a positive thinker and actor. I look at a glass; a negative person sees the glass and says: too bad it's half empty ... I look at the same glass and say: Hallelujah!! It's half full!!! -- Maya Angelou
My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style -- Maya Angelou
I've conducted the Boston Pops! Imagine that! Me! Maya Angelou! I've sang and danced at La Scala! -- Maya Angelou
Drinks on the closed-in porch. The exactness of her -- Maya Angelou
At our best, we are all teachers -- Maya Angelou
We need to remember that we are all created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed. -- Maya Angelou
You can call for the cook, call for the baker, you may as well call for the undertaker. -- Maya Angelou
I have learned to accept my responsibility and to forgive myself first, then to apologise to anyone injured by my misreckoning. -- Maya Angelou
Don't let the man bring you down. -- Maya Angelou
When you do nothing you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get involved you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing you are working to make things better. -- Maya Angelou
I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings. -- Maya Angelou
I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence. -- Maya Angelou
Courage - you develop courage by doing small things like just as if you wouldn't want to pick up a 100-pound weight without preparing yourself. -- Maya Angelou
I might have it at six-fifteen a.m. just as soon as I get in, but usually it's about eleven o'clock when I'll have a glass of sherry. -- Maya Angelou
Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn't know before you learned it. -- Maya Angelou
It's amazing. I can do anything. And do it well. Any good thing, I can do it. That's why I am who I am, yes, because God loves me and I'm amazed at it. I'm grateful for it. -- Maya Angelou
I decided I wouldn't pee on her if her heart was on fire. -- Maya Angelou
Childhood's logic never asks to be proved (all conclusions are absolute). -- Maya Angelou
I try to plant peace if I do not want discord; to plant loyalty and honesty if I want to avoid betrayal and lies. -- Maya Angelou
I've read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of 'You Can't Go Home Again' and 'Look Homeward, Angel.' -- Maya Angelou
Living well is an art which can be developed. -- Maya Angelou
You see, baby, you have to protect yourself. If you don't protect yourself, you look like a fool asking somebody else to protect you. I thought about that for a second. She was right. A woman needs to support herself before she asks anyone else to support her. -- Maya Angelou
Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude. -- Maya Angelou
And my seven-year-old world humpty-dumptied, never to be put back together again. -- Maya Angelou
Lovers think quite different thoughts
while lying side by side. -- Maya Angelou
Poetry gave me back my voice. -- Maya Angelou
Nothing's wrong with going to jail for something you believe in. Remember, jail was made for people. Not horses. -- Maya Angelou
If one was dying, it had to be done in style if the dying took place in whitefolks' part of town. On -- Maya Angelou
While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of mans humanity to a man. -- Maya Angelou
Every day offers you 10,000 reasons to cry, but if you can find just one reason to laugh then you will be all right. -- Maya Angelou
I was raped when I was very young. I told my brother the name of the person who had done it. Within a few days the man was killed. In my child's mind
seven and a half years old
I thought my voice had killed him. So I stopped talking for five years. -- Maya Angelou
I'm grateful to be an American. I am grateful that we can be angry at the terrorist assault and at the same time be intelligent enough not to hold a grudge against every Arab and every Muslim. -- Maya Angelou
I hope you always find a reason to smile -- Maya Angelou
Home is a refuge not only from the world, but a refuge from my worries, my troubles, my concerns. I like beautiful things around me. I like to be beautiful because it delights my eyes and my soul is lifted up. -- Maya Angelou
The question is not how to survive, but how to thrive with passion, compassion, humor and style. -- Maya Angelou
Anyone of us can be a rainbow in somebody's clouds. I want the University of Cincinnati to be a rainbow in the clouds. The University of Cincinnati is really a possibility of hope; it is a rainbow. -- Maya Angelou
Courage, I don't think anybody is born with courage. I think you may be born with a flair to braggadocio, you know. That's not courage. -- Maya Angelou
The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise. -- Maya Angelou
It was a little light, but she aimed it directly at the gloom of ignorance. -- Maya Angelou
Sometimes guns really matter. Protecting those who need protection - children, women, minorities in rough parts of town, old folks living in places where cops aren't nearby. Guns are true empowerment for the powerless. -- Maya Angelou
Modesty is a learned adaptation. It's stuck on like decals. As soon as life slams a modest person against the wall, that modesty will fall off faster than a G-string will fall off a stripper. -- Maya Angelou
I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water. -- Maya Angelou
Effective action is always unjust. -- Maya Angelou
Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you're the funniest person you've ever heard of. -- Maya Angelou
If you're serious, you really understand that it's important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you're the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you're funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity. -- Maya Angelou
When you learn, teach, -- Maya Angelou
A woman who is convinced that she deserves to accept only the best challenges herself to give the best. Then she is living phenomenally. -- Maya Angelou
The Holy Spirit upon my left leads my feet without ceasing into the camp of the righteous and into the tents of the free. -- Maya Angelou
When I walk in, they may like me or dislike me, but everybody knows I'm here -- Maya Angelou
I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, 'I love you.' ... There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt. -- Maya Angelou
I will look after you and I will look after anybody you say needs to be looked after, any way you say. I am here. I brought my whole self to you. I am your mother. -- Maya Angelou
I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life. -- Maya Angelou
Each time a dancer moves devoutly or a composer faithfully searches the silence for the veiled melodies, eternity is engaged. -- Maya Angelou
We agreed that great men and women should be forced to live as long as possible. The reverence they enjoyed was a life sentence, which they could neither revoke nor modify. -- Maya Angelou
My encouragement to you is to go tomorrow to the library. -- Maya Angelou
Remember if you decide for the Army, I'll support you. If you decide to be a whore, all I can say is, be the best. Don't be a funky chippy. Go with class.' She -- Maya Angelou
The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change. -- Maya Angelou
A wise woman wishes to be no one's enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone's victim. -- Maya Angelou
We need Joy as we need air. We need Love as we need water. We need each other as we need the earth we share. -- Maya Angelou
Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to California, I started listening to Spanish music, mostly Mexican music. But were I in Egypt, I would listen to the music of the people, or if I was in Italy, I'd listen to Italian music. -- Maya Angelou
I washed walls, polished door knobs and the tiny window. The scales and stench of defeat floated into the pail's dirty water. The -- Maya Angelou
The knowledge that we had the power to upset that goddess made us look at each other conspiratorially and smile. It also made her human. -- Maya Angelou
You will face many defeats in your life, but never let yourself be defeated. -- Maya Angelou
I agree with Balzac and 19th-century writers, black and white, who say, 'I write for money.' Yes, I think everybody should be paid handsomely; I insist on it, and I pay people who work for me, or with me, handsomely. -- Maya Angelou
Strong women- precious jewels all- their humanness is evident in their accessibility. We are able to enter into the spirit of these women and rejoice in their warmth and courage. -- Maya Angelou
How wonderful it is to be an American. We have known the best of times and the worst of times. -- Maya Angelou
Life was cheap and death entirely free. -- Maya Angelou
We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders. -- Maya Angelou
Sometimes you have to defend yourself from yourself. When -- Maya Angelou
The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry. -- Maya Angelou
It is this belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable. -- Maya Angelou
Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the 'leaders' must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities. -- Maya Angelou
It was the awakening summer of 1960 and the entire country was in labor. Something wonderful was about to be born, and we were all going to be good parents to the welcome child. Its name was Freedom. Then, -- Maya Angelou
Love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
A Brave and Startling Truth. -- Maya Angelou
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill, of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill, for the caged bird sings of freedom. -- Maya Angelou
When someone shows you who they are, the first time, believe them Maya Angelou -- Maya Angelou
I do like to have guns around. I don't like to carry them. But I like - if somebody is going to come into my house and I have not put out the welcome mat, I want to stop them. -- Maya Angelou
Life is a glorious banquet, a limitless and delicious buffet. -- Maya Angelou
Be a rainbow in someone else's cloud. -- Maya Angelou
Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant. -- Maya Angelou
Precious jewel, you glow, you shine, reflecting all the good things in the world. Just look at yourself. -- Maya Angelou
It's very hard for adults to maintain respect and romance so that a love affair can be sustained over years. -- Maya Angelou
Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. -- Maya Angelou
My heart is so heavy when I see the reality of the Indian reservation and as an American, I know I am, too, responsible. -- Maya Angelou
Change everything you don't like about your life. But when you come to a thing you can't change, then change the way you think about it. You'll see it new, and maybe a new way to change it. The -- Maya Angelou
No human being can be more human than another human being. I liberate you from my ignorance. -- Maya Angelou
I've always written. There's a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother's papers were destroyed. I'd written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then. -- Maya Angelou
I don't think modesty is a very good virtue, if it is a virtue at all. A modest person will drop the modesty in a minute. It's a learned affectation. -- Maya Angelou
I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I'll be OK. -- Maya Angelou
If you do not like anything, alter it. If you can not change it, adjust your mindset. Will not complain. -- Maya Angelou
When was the last time anyone ever told you how important you are? -- Maya Angelou
I have found that the platonic affection
in friendships and familial
love for children can be relied upon
with certainty to lift the bruised soul
and repair the wounded spirit -- Maya Angelou
Ain't nothin' to it, but to do it. -- Maya Angelou
The Black woman in the South who raises sons, grandsons and nephews had her heartstrings tied to a hanging noose. Any break from routine may herald for them unbearable news. -- Maya Angelou
No,nobody but nobody can make it out her alone. -- Maya Angelou
I love you, Mom. Maybe now you'll have a chance to grow up. A -- Maya Angelou
Don't kneel please. Sometimes people put people on pedestals so they can see them more clearly and knock them off more easily -- Maya Angelou
A mother's love liberates. -- Maya Angelou
A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. -- Maya Angelou
The naturally lonely person does not look for comfort in love, but accepts the variables as due course. -- Maya Angelou
Later he explained that when a person is beating you you should scream as loud as possible; maybe the whipper will become embarrassed or else some sympathetic soul might come to your rescue. -- Maya Angelou
I'm grateful to intelligent people. That doesn't mean educated. That doesn't mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call 'mother wit' means intelligence that you had in your mother's womb. That's what you rely on. You know what's right to do. -- Maya Angelou
When I forgive other people, I let them go, I free them from my ignorance. And as soon as I do, I feel lighter, brighter and better. -- Maya Angelou
My grandmother told me that every good thing I do helps some human being in the world. I believed her 50 years ago and still do. -- Maya Angelou
I was always yours to have.
You were always mine.
We have loved each other in and out of time. -- Maya Angelou
A person must make the effort to learn, and growing is the inevitable reward of learning. He -- Maya Angelou
If I wanted to write, I had to be willing to develop a kind of concentration found mostly in people awaiting execution. I had to learn technique and surrender my ignorance. John -- Maya Angelou
I thank God I'm myself and for the life I'm given to live and for friends and lovers and beloveds, and I thank God for knowing that all those people have already paid for me. -- Maya Angelou
To be allowed, no, invited into the private lives of strangers, and to share their joys and fears, was a chance to exchange the Southern bitter wormwood for a cup of mead with Beowulf or a hot cup of tea and milk with Oliver Twist. -- Maya Angelou
I wish we could stop the little lies. I don't mean that one has to be brutally frank. I don't believe that we should be brutal about anything, however, it is wonderfully liberating to be honest. One does not have to tell all that one knows, but we should be careful what we say is the truth. -- Maya Angelou
Laugh as much as you can. -- Maya Angelou
I believe in living a poetic life, an art full life. Everything we do from the way we raise our children to the way we welcome our friends is part of a large canvas we are creating. -- Maya Angelou
Can I do it? I'd rather not try and fail.
That's stupid talk Maya. Every try will not succeed. But if you're going to live, live at all, your business is trying ... You fail, you get up and try again. -- Maya Angelou
Exchange love for hate ... Thereby, making the present comfortable and the future promising. -- Maya Angelou
On Saturday afternoons when all the things are done in the house and there's no real work to be done, I play Bach and Chopin and turn it up real loudly and get a good bottle of chardonnay and sit out on my deck and look out at the garden. -- Maya Angelou
Life offers us tickets to places which we have not knowingly asked for. -- Maya Angelou
Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning. -- Maya Angelou
I wouldn't trade anything for my story now. -- Maya Angelou
The area where we are the greatest is the area in which we inspire, encourage and connect with another human being. -- Maya Angelou
Love liberates. It doesn't just hold, that's ego. Love liberates. -- Maya Angelou
Will I be less dead because I wrote this poem or you more because you read it long years hence. -- Maya Angelou
My mind struck a truth as an elbow can strike a table edge. -- Maya Angelou
Everything costs and costs the earth. -- Maya Angelou
The weight of appreciation and the threat, which was never spoken, of a return to Momma were burdens that clogged my childish wits into impassivity. -- Maya Angelou
In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me. -- Maya Angelou
It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody. -- Maya Angelou
We are loved by Love itself. There is nothing good that we can't do. -- Maya Angelou
You find the path by walking it. -- Maya Angelou
we were right-handed into a dully furnished living room. L.D. -- Maya Angelou
I am a child of God. I always carry that with me. -- Maya Angelou
Moderation in all things. And even moderation in moderation. Don't get too much moderation, you know? -- Maya Angelou
Trust your brain to suggest a solution, then have the courage to follow through. -- Maya Angelou
Stand up straight and realize who you are, that you tower over your circumstances. You are a child of God. Stand up straight. -- Maya Angelou
The terrorist action of 9/11 gave birth to President Obama's entry to the White House. Not directly, but indirectly. -- Maya Angelou
All information belongs to everybody all the time. It should be available. It should be accessible to the child, to the woman, to the man, to the old person, to the semiliterate, to the presidents of universities, to everyone. It should be open. -- Maya Angelou
I am the dream and the hope of the slave. -- Maya Angelou
Education helps one case cease being intimidated by strange situations. -- Maya Angelou
The most important thing is to DARE. -- Maya Angelou
This a a wonderful day. I've never seen this one before. -- Maya Angelou
Then go to my room where solitude gaped whale-jawed wide to swallow me entire. -- Maya Angelou
Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art. -- Maya Angelou
I know that I've been guided by God. I am obedient. -- Maya Angelou
To grow up is to stop putting blame on parents -- Maya Angelou
People are too busy putting things under microscopes and so forth. Creativity is greater than the sum of its parts. -- Maya Angelou
You want me to do something ... tell me I can't do it. -- Maya Angelou
Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud. -- Maya Angelou
You build your 'COURAGE MUSCLE' daily, by being courageous in little things. Just do right.. -- Maya Angelou
You rose into my life like a promised sunrise, brightening my days with the light in your eyes. I've never been so strong. Now I'm where I belong. -- Maya Angelou
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. -- Maya Angelou
No not me go find someone else to bring down -- Maya Angelou
There is a spirit in all music, the spirit has the ability to conjure up thoughts even pictures of something that happened or you wished would happen or you anticipate happening. Music has the ability to create ideas in you and me. It has the ability to encourage us to be creative. -- Maya Angelou
Although there was always generosity in the Negro neighborhood, it was indulged on pain of sacrifice. Whatever was given by Black people to other Blacks was most probably needed as desperately by the donor as by the receiver. A fact which made the giving or receiving a rich exchange. -- Maya Angelou
I made bitterness into a wad and swallowed it. I -- Maya Angelou
My mother raised me, and then freed me, -- Maya Angelou
To those who have given up on love: I say, Trust life a little bit. -- Maya Angelou
Parents who tell their offspring that sex is an act performed only for procreation do everyone a serious disservice. -- Maya Angelou
Teachers of my
early youth
Taught forgiveness
stressed the truth
Here then is my
Christian lack:
If I'm struck then
I'll strike back. -- Maya Angelou
Misery is a faithful company keeper, and Comfort was dissolving under its attention. -- Maya Angelou
My life has been one great big joke,
A dance that's walked,
A song that's spoke,
I laugh so hard I almost choke,
When I think about myself. -- Maya Angelou
It may in fact be utterly impossible to be successful without helping others to become successful. -- Maya Angelou
I never expected anyone to take care of me, but in my wildest dreams and juvenile yearnings, I wanted the house with the picket fence from June Allyson movies. I knew that was yearning like one yearns to fly. -- Maya Angelou
My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. -- Maya Angelou
A single fantasy can transform a million realities. -- Maya Angelou
Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age. -- Maya Angelou
I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver. -- Maya Angelou
Whether you are happy or whether you are sad, it is wise to remember you are really in process. -- Maya Angelou
Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn't accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else's insistence or someone else's whim or convenience. -- Maya Angelou
Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn't be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely. -- Maya Angelou
We need the courage to say obesity is not funny and vulgarity is not amusing. -- Maya Angelou
I love wisdom. And you can never be great at anything unless you love it. Not be in love with it, but love the thing, admire the thing. And it seems that if you love the thing, and you don't just want to possess it, it will find you. -- Maya Angelou
I've learned that I still have a lot to learn. -- Maya Angelou
The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind. -- Maya Angelou
Always in the black spirituals there's that promise that things are going to be better, by and by. -- Maya Angelou
When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one - it's the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky - in the big cities, too, for that matter. -- Maya Angelou
I have risked everything to tell the truth. Tell the truth -- Maya Angelou
Glory falls around us as we sob a dirge of desolation on the Cross -- Maya Angelou
Not only was cleanliness next to Godliness, dirtiness was the inventor of misery. -- Maya Angelou
Momma convinced us that not only was cleanliness next to Godliness, dirtiness was the inventor of misery. The -- Maya Angelou
It is a no-fail, incontrovertible reality: If you get, give. If you learn, teach. You can't do anything with that except do it. -- Maya Angelou
Listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God. -- Maya Angelou
I stood dumbfounded, founded in dumbness. -- Maya Angelou
I stood dumfounded, founded in dumbness. -- Maya Angelou
The more you cry, the less you'll pee, and peeing is more important. -- Maya Angelou
Ev'ry Voice and Sing" - words by James Weldon Johnson and music by J. Rosamond Johnson. Copyright by Edward B. Marks Music Corporation. Used by permission. -- Maya Angelou
I will not sit in a room with black people when the N word is used. I know it was meant to belittle a person, so I will not sit there and have that poison put on me. Now a black person can say, 'Oh, you know, I can use this word because I'm black.' -- Maya Angelou
The breezes of the West African night were intimate and shy, licking the hair, sweeping through cotton dresses with unseemly intimacy, then disappearing into the utter blackness. -- Maya Angelou
No one comes from the earth like grass. We come like trees. We all have roots. -- Maya Angelou
He never went to church, which Bailey and I thought also proved he was a very courageous person. How great it would be to grow up like that, to be able to stare religion down, -- Maya Angelou
I am never proud to participate in violence, yet, I know that each of us must care enough for ourselves, that we can be ready and able to come to our own defense when and wherever needed. -- Maya Angelou
In all the institutions I try to be present and accountable for all I do and leave undone. I know that eventually I shall have to be present and accountable n the presence of God. I do not wish to be found wanting. -- Maya Angelou
I had no heart nor art to drag him back to the reeking reality of our life and times. -- Maya Angelou
Nothing hurts more than realizing they meant everything to you, but you meant nothing to them. -- Maya Angelou
Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother. -- Maya Angelou
This book has been written to examine some of the ways love heals and helps a person to climb impossible heights and rise from immeasurable depths. -- Maya Angelou
Upon reflection, I marvel that no one saw through me enough to bundle me off to the nearest mental institution. The fact that it didn't happen depended less on my being a good actress than the fact that I was surrounded, as I had been all my life, by strangers. -- Maya Angelou
I like chicken a lot because chicken is generous - that is to say, it's obedient. It will do whatever you tell it to do. -- Maya Angelou
Poetry is music for the human voice. Until you actually speak it or someone speaks it, it has not come into its own. -- Maya Angelou
If our children are to approve of themselves, they must see that we approve of ourselves. -- Maya Angelou
Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him. -- Maya Angelou
Never let white folks know what you really think. If you're sad, laugh. If you're bleeding inside, dance. -- Maya Angelou
Every day I awaken I am grateful. My intent is to be totally present in that day. And laugh as much as possible. -- Maya Angelou
You can never be great at anything unless you love it. -- Maya Angelou
Y'all dropped the ball and you should be shamed. -- Maya Angelou
At one time in my life, from the time I was seven until I was about 13, I didn't speak. I only spoke to my brother. The reason I didn't speak: I had been molested, and I told the name of the molester to my brother who told it to the family. -- Maya Angelou
You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it. -- Maya Angelou
When old folks laugh,
they consider the promise
of dear painless death, and generously
forgive life for happening
to them. -- Maya Angelou
If we live long enough, we may even get over war. I imagine a time when somebody will mention the word war and everyone in the room will start to laugh. And what do you mean war? -- Maya Angelou
If we don't plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don't have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don't have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind. -- Maya Angelou
When it looks like the sun isn't going to shine any more, God puts a rainbow in the clouds. Each one of us has the possibility, the responsibility, the probability to be the rainbow in the clouds. -- Maya Angelou
The most noble
cause known to man
is the liberation
of the human mind
and spirit. -- Maya Angelou
Don't bring negative to my door. -- Maya Angelou
My hope is that we develop enough courage to develop courage. To try to have, try to learn to treat each other fairly, with generosity and kindness. -- Maya Angelou
Shadows on the wall Noises down the hall Life doesn't frighten me at all Bad dogs barking loud Big ghosts in a cloud Life doesn't frighten me at all. -- Maya Angelou
I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.
(Popular misquote of "You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.") -- Maya Angelou
I've got a magic charm
That I keep up my sleeve,
I can walk the ocean floor
And never have to breathe. -- Maya Angelou
Intelligence is a separate gift, for the benefit of students, so that they may think of themselves as intellectual and not very intelligent, or intelligent and not very intellectual. One hopes, of course, that they try to bring the two virtues, the two elements, into their lives at the same time. -- Maya Angelou
Be present in all things and thankful for all things. -- Maya Angelou
If you are going down a road and don't like what's in front of you, and look behind you and don't like what you see, get off the road. Create a new path! -- Maya Angelou
A Woman in harmony with her spirit
is like a river flowing.
She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination
prepared to be herself
and only herself -- Maya Angelou
I believe that quality level is determined primarily by the actual design of the product itself, not by quality control in the production process. -- Maya Angelou
It's good to remember that in crises, natural crises, human beings forget for awhile their ignorances, their biases, their prejudices. For a little while, neighbors help neighbors and strangers help strangers. -- Maya Angelou
Laugh as often as possible. You must. Because the world will offer you every reason to weep. So as often as possible, you laugh. That, I think, is part of the Great Love. -- Maya Angelou
Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends. -- Maya Angelou
Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it. -- Maya Angelou
One of the saddest things in the world is to see a cynical young person. -- Maya Angelou
I've never had a dislike for men. I've been badly treated by some. But I've been loved greatly by some. I married a lot of them. -- Maya Angelou
Politicians must set their aims for the high ground and according to our various leanings, Democratic, Republican, Independent, we will follow. Politicians must be told if they continue to sink into the mud of obscenity, they will proceed alone. -- Maya Angelou
Joy is an important element of happiness. It is sometimes the difference between striving and thriving. One must nurture the joy in one's life so that it reaches full bloom. -- Maya Angelou
I think all poems are commissioned. They just come to me without somebody outside commissioning them. The idea comes and I will live with them 'til I get it as close to what I mean. I've never been totally satisfied. I've come close a few times. -- Maya Angelou
Whether our new start was going to end in success or failure didn't cross my mind. What I did know, and know consciously, was that it was already exciting. -- Maya Angelou
When we decide to be happy we accept the responsibility to bring happiness to someone else. -- Maya Angelou
There is nothing a person can't do, and there should be nothing a human being didn't care about. It was the most positive encouragement I could have hoped for. -- Maya Angelou
I got my own back. -- Maya Angelou
I've still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, 'You know, that's the truth. I wasn't there, and I wasn't a six-foot black girl, but that's the truth.' -- Maya Angelou
I think when we don't know what to do it's wise to do nothing. Sit down quietly; quiet our hearts and minds and breathe deeply. -- Maya Angelou
There's racism and sexism and ageism and all sorts of idiocies. But bad news is not news. We've had bad news as a species for a long time. We've had slavery and human sacrifice and the holocaust and brutalities of such measure. -- Maya Angelou
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonders of this world,
that is when, and only when we come to it -- Maya Angelou
All I got to do is stay black and die. -- Maya Angelou
The unsaid words pushed roughly against the thoughts that we had no craft to verbalize, and crowded the room to uneasiness. -- Maya Angelou
When you know you are of worth, you don't have to raise your voice, you don't have to become rude, you don't have to become vulgar; you just are. And you are like the sky is, as the air is, the same way water is wet. It doesn't have to protest. -- Maya Angelou
She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors. -- Maya Angelou
Difficult is a far cry from impossible. The distance between these two lies hope. Hope and fear cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Invite one to stay. -- Maya Angelou
Living in a state of terror was new to many white people in America, but black people have been living in a state of terror in this country for more than 400 years. -- Maya Angelou
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees. -- Maya Angelou
Few, if any, survive their teens -- Maya Angelou
I'm considered wise, and sometimes I see myself as knowing. Most of the time, I see myself as wanting to know. And I see myself as a very interested person. I've never been bored in my life. -- Maya Angelou
I don't think there's such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind. -- Maya Angelou
We all have that possibility, that potential and that promise of seeing beyond the seeming. -- Maya Angelou
While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God's creation. -- Maya Angelou
Each time I write a book, every time I face that yellow pad, the challenge is so great. I have written eleven books, but each time I think, 'Uh oh, they're going to find out now. I've run a game on everybody and they're going to find me out. -- Maya Angelou
I want to thank you, Lord, for life and all that's in it.
Thank you for the day and for the hour, and the minute. -- Maya Angelou
Beneath the skin, beyond the differing features and into the true heart of being, fundamentally, we are more alike, my friend, than we are unalike. -- Maya Angelou
Martin Luther King was a human being with a brilliant mind, a powerful heart, and insight, and courage and also with a sense of humor. So he was accessible. -- Maya Angelou
In my twenties in San Francisco I became a sophisticate and an acting agnostic. It wasn't that I had stopped believing in God; it's just that God didn't seem to be around the neighborhoods I frequented. -- Maya Angelou
Before he could bring his lips together, his teeth fell, no, actually his teeth jumped, out of his mouth. -- Maya Angelou
Imagine, I might really become somebody. Someday. -- Maya Angelou
The truth is you never can leave home. You take it with you everywhere you go. It's under your skin. It moves the tongue or slows it, colors the thinking, impedes upon the logic. -- Maya Angelou
Money and power can liberate only if they are used to do so. They can imprison and inhibit more finally than barred windows and iron chains. -- Maya Angelou
Go," she whispered. "Go. Show them you spell your name W-O-M-A-N. -- Maya Angelou
Once you appreciate one of your blessings, one of your senses, your sense of hearing, then you begin to respect the sense of seeing and touching and tasting, you learn to respect all the senses. -- Maya Angelou
The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. -- Maya Angelou
I've tried to be totally present, so that when I'm finished with a piece of work, I'm finished ... The work, once completed, does not need me. The work I'm working on needs my total concentration. The one that's finished doesn't belong to me anymore. It belongs to itself. -- Maya Angelou
Each of us has the power and responsibility to become a rainbow in the clouds. -- Maya Angelou
I don't know how much longer I'll be around. I'll probably be writing when the Lord says, 'Maya, Maya Angelou, it's time. -- Maya Angelou
Remember, people will judge you by your actions not your intentions. You may have a heart of gold but so does a hard-boiled egg. -- Maya Angelou
I want you to write down your blessings. -- Maya Angelou
Something made greater by ourselves and in turn that makes us greater. -- Maya Angelou
If I walked into the kitchen without washing my hands as a kid, I'd hear a loud 'A-hem!' from my mother or grandmother. Now I count on other people to do the same. -- Maya Angelou
You can't be consistently fair, consistently generous, consistently just, or consistently merciful. You can be anything erratically, but to be that thing time after time after time, you have to have courage. -- Maya Angelou
I love a Hebrew National hot dog with an ice-cold Corona - no lime. If the phone rings, I won't answer until I'm done. -- Maya Angelou
Everybody is worth everything. -- Maya Angelou
I'm interested in women's health because I'm a woman. I'd be a darn fool not to be on my own side. -- Maya Angelou
Oh, the holiness of being the injured party. -- Maya Angelou
Hope does not take away your problems. It can lift you above them. -- Maya Angelou
You can only become great at something you are willing to sacrifice for -- Maya Angelou
Just because I am wheelchair-bound doesn't mean I don't get around. -- Maya Angelou
I think a hero is any person really intent on making this a better place for all people. -- Maya Angelou
Love liberates; it doesn't bind. -- Maya Angelou
The wise woman thinks twice and speaks once or, better yet, does not speak at all. -- Maya Angelou
Whining is not only graceless, but can be dangerous. It can alert a brute that a victim is in the neighborhood. -- Maya Angelou
I'm very blessed that I have a healthy temper. I can become quite angry and burning in anger, but I have never been bitter. Bitterness is a corrosive, terrible acid. It just eats you and makes you sick. -- Maya Angelou
I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and the dragons of home under one's skin, at the extreme corners of one's eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe. -- Maya Angelou
My obsession with pineapples nearly drove me mad. I dreamt of the days when I would be grown and able to buy a whole carton for myself alone. Although -- Maya Angelou
Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaking need for an unshakable God. My pretty Black brother was my Kingdom Come. -- Maya Angelou
My work is to be honest. My work is to try to think clearly, then have the courage to make sure that what I say is the truth. -- Maya Angelou
The most important thing I can tell you about aging is this: If you really feel that you want to have an off-the-shoulder blouse and some big beads and thong sandals and a dirndl skirt and a magnolia in your hair, do it. Even if you're wrinkled. -- Maya Angelou
The best comfort food will always be greens, cornbread, and fried chicken. -- Maya Angelou
If you're a human being, you can attempt to do what other human beings have done. We don't understand talent any more than we understand electricity. -- Maya Angelou
I answer the heroic question, 'Death, where is thy sting?' with 'It is in my heart and mind and memories. -- Maya Angelou
If you're for the right thing, you do it without thinking. -- Maya Angelou
We are more alike than we are unalike!" That -- Maya Angelou
Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, "I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway." -- Maya Angelou
If a person - any human being - is told often enough, "You are nothing. You are nothing. You account for nothing. You count for nothing. You are less than a human being. I have no visibility of you", the person finally begins to believe it. -- Maya Angelou
When we find someone who is brave, fun, intelligent, and loving, we have to thank the universe. -- Maya Angelou
How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes! -- Maya Angelou
Continue. Be loving and be strong. Be fierce and be kind. And don't give in and don't give up.' -- Maya Angelou
I try to live what I consider a "poetic existence." That means I take responsibility for the air I breathe and the space I take up. I try to be immediate, to be totally present for all my work. -- Maya Angelou
In order to be profoundly dishonest, a person must have one of two qualities: either he is unscrupulously ambitious, or he is unswervingly egocentric. -- Maya Angelou
We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color. -- Maya Angelou
It is the worst thing you can do, women, is whine, .. I mean the worst. Don't complain, protest. -- Maya Angelou
In a long meter hymn, a singer - they call it 'lays out a line.' And then the whole church joins in in repeating that line. And they form a wall of harmony so tight, you can't wedge a pin between it. -- Maya Angelou
Continue to plant a kiss of concern on the cheek of the sick and the aged and infirm and count that actions as natural and to be expected. -- Maya Angelou
It is only out of ignorance that people are cruel, because they really don't think it will come back. -- Maya Angelou
If I have a monument in this world, it is my son. -- Maya Angelou
I am a woman phenomenally, phenomenal woman that is your grandmother, that is your mother, that is your sister, that is you and that is me. -- Maya Angelou
Don't hesitate to learn the most painful aspects of our history, understand it. -- Maya Angelou
Shakespeare - I was very influenced - still am - by Shakespeare. I couldn't believe that a white man in the 16th century could so know my heart. -- Maya Angelou
I'm happy ... I laugh as much as I can and cry when I have to, without apology. I think that's happy. -- Maya Angelou
We are the victims of the world's most comprehensive robbery. Life demands a balance. It's all right if we do a little robbing now. -- Maya Angelou
I know that I'm not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don't know how not to. -- Maya Angelou
I don't believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at. -- Maya Angelou
The music was my friend, my lover, my family. -- Maya Angelou
Our stories come from our lives and from the playwright's pen, the mind of the actor, the roles we create, the artistry of life itself and the quest for peace. -- Maya Angelou
Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it's right, it's easy. It's the other way round, too. If it's slovenly written, then it's hard to read. It doesn't give the reader what the careful writer can give the reader. -- Maya Angelou
My pride had been starched by a family who assumed unlimited authority in its own affairs. -- Maya Angelou
When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed. -- Maya Angelou
Thus we lived through a major war. The questions in the ghettos was, can we make it through a minor peace? -- Maya Angelou
When the storyteller tells the truth, she reminds us that human beings are more alike than unalike ... A story is what it's like to be a human being-to be knocked down and to miraculously arise. Each one of us has arisen, awakened. We do rise. -- Maya Angelou
The man who is a bigot,
is the worst thing God has got,
except his match, his woman,
who really is Ms. Begot. -- Maya Angelou
The desire to reach hearts is wise -- Maya Angelou
I was a dancer for many years. I was a premier dancer with 'Porgy and Bess,' the opera. And I taught dance some, in different places. -- Maya Angelou
I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at commensurate speed. -- Maya Angelou
If men are God's gift to women, then God must really love gag gifts. -- Maya Angelou
Glasses clinked and voices rubbed each other. -- Maya Angelou
A great soul serves everyone all the time. A great soul never dies. It brings us together again and again. -- Maya Angelou
I did then what I knew best, when I knew better, I did better. Maya Angelo -- Maya Angelou
Poetry helps my soul escape its encasement. -- Maya Angelou
Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it! -- Maya Angelou
Love is many things. It is varied. One thing love is not, is unsure. -- Maya Angelou
I try to see every day as a celebration. -- Maya Angelou
Do not be wedded forever to fear, yoked eternally to brutishness. -- Maya Angelou
No one mentioned his(Bailey's) absence as if things were as they should be and always were. -- Maya Angelou
I've had people explain to me what one of my poems meant, and I've been surprised that it means that to them. If a person can use a poem of mine to interpret her life or his life, good. I can't control that. Nor would I want to. -- Maya Angelou
Light and shadow are opposite sides of the same coin. We can illuminate our paths or darken our way. It is a matter of choice. -- Maya Angelou
the true nature of the human heart is as whimsical as spring weather. All signals may aim toward a fall of rain when suddenly the skies will clear. -- Maya Angelou
When someone shows you who they are, you should believe them. -- Maya Angelou
If you have, give. If you learn, teach. -- Maya Angelou
If I'm the people's poet, then I ought to be in people's hands - and, I hope, in their heart. -- Maya Angelou
I'm just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression. -- Maya Angelou
I do not need to know all things. I remind myself that it is sufficient that I know what I know and know that without believing that I will always know what I know or that what I know will always be true. -- Maya Angelou
When I'm writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness. -- Maya Angelou
We must create a climate where people agree that human beings are more alike than unalike. The only way to do that is through education. -- Maya Angelou
When I say 'I am a Christian', I'm not shouting 'I'm saved'. I'm whispering 'I get lost'. That is why I chose this way ... -- Maya Angelou
When you wish someone joy, you wish them peace, love, prosperity, happiness ... all the good things. -- Maya Angelou
To be human is to be challenged to be more divine. Not even to try to meet such a challenge is the biggest defeat imaginable. -- Maya Angelou
I commend lovers, I am enheartened by lovers, I am encouraged by their courage and inspired by their passion. -- Maya Angelou
As a nurse, we have the opportunity to heal the heart, mind, soul and body of our patients, their families and ourselves. They may not remember your name but they will never forget the way you made them feel. -- Maya Angelou
Open your heart, fling your hopes high and set your dreams aloft. I am here to hold your hand. -- Maya Angelou
This is my life. it is my one time to be me. i want to experience every good thing. -- Maya Angelou
If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love. -- Maya Angelou
What humility does for one is it reminds us that there are people before me. I have already been paid for. And what I need to do is prepare myself so that I can pay for someone else who has yet to come but who may be here and needs me. -- Maya Angelou
She's one of our fans. She comes to the theater and allows us to curse and berate her, and that's her contribution to our struggle. Roscoe -- Maya Angelou
Language is man's way of communicating with his fellow man and it is language alone which separates him from the lower animals. -- Maya Angelou
I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine ... before she realizes she's reading. -- Maya Angelou
Mostly, what I have learned so far about aging, despite the creakiness of one's bones and cragginess of one's once-silken skin, is this: Do it. By all means, do it. -- Maya Angelou
A friend may be waiting behind a stranger's face. -- Maya Angelou
Be the rainbow in someone else's cloud. -- Maya Angelou
Happiness is a chance to talk to a friend, to hear good music, to have a good glass of wine. Happiness is a chance to be myself and to find people with whom I agree or who I don't agree but I can learn something. -- Maya Angelou
I'm a religious woman. And I feel I have responsibility. I have no modesty at all. I'm even afraid of it - it's a learned affectation and it's just stuck on me like decals. Now I pray for humility because that comes from inside out. -- Maya Angelou
The dread of futility has been my life-long plague. -- Maya Angelou
Bitterness is cancer - it eats upon the host. It doesn't do anything to the object of its displeasure. -- Maya Angelou
This is what I am learning, at 82 years old: the main thing is to be in love with the search for truth. -- Maya Angelou
Women been gittin' pregnant ever since Eve ate that apple. -- Maya Angelou
Be wary when a naked person offers you his shirt -- Maya Angelou
A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but a woman called by a devaluing name will only be weakened by the misnomer. -- Maya Angelou
I've had rainbows in my clouds. -- Maya Angelou
I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me. -- Maya Angelou
Try, start always at home. This is my encouragement to all writers, start at home. All virtues and vices begin at home, and then spread abroad. -- Maya Angelou
If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult. -- Maya Angelou
When women take care of their health they become their own best friend. -- Maya Angelou
She was born poor and powerless in a land where power is money and money is adored.
Born black in a land where might is white and white is adored.
Born female in a land where decisions are masculine and masculinity controls. -- Maya Angelou
Education is a process that goes on 'til death. The moment you see someone who knows she has found the one true way, and can call all the others false, then you know you're in the company of an ignoramus. -- Maya Angelou
I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I'm a human being, too. And I'm on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles. -- Maya Angelou
You dwell in whitened castles
with deep and poisoned moats
and cannot hear the curses
which fill your children's throats. -- Maya Angelou
We are more alike than unalike. -- Maya Angelou
Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives. -- Maya Angelou
I was liked, and what a difference it made. -- Maya Angelou
I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too. -- Maya Angelou
You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it's all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive. -- Maya Angelou
Continue to be bold, courageous. Try to chose the wisest thing and once you've chosen the wisest thing go out and try to achieve it. Be it. -- Maya Angelou
When I think about myself, I almost laugh myself to death, My life has been one great big joke, A dance that's walked, A song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke, When I think about myself. Sixty -- Maya Angelou
Most people don't grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging. -- Maya Angelou
Jealousy in romance is like salt in food. A little can enhance the savor, but too much can spoil the pleasure and, under certain circumstances, can be life-threatening -- Maya Angelou
I was basically good. Not understood, and not even liked, but even so, just, and better than just. I was merciful. -- Maya Angelou
The loss of young first love is so painful that it borders on the ludicrous. -- Maya Angelou
Never, never let a person know you're frightened. And a group of them ... absolutely never. Fear brings out the worst in everybody. -- Maya Angelou
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. -- Maya Angelou
Being physically close to extreme power causes one to experience a giddiness, an intoxication. -- Maya Angelou
Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history. -- Maya Angelou
My Mothers Gift of Courage To Me Were Both Large and Small. -- Maya Angelou
Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time. -- Maya Angelou
If I'm here, I'll be trying to be a better human being, a better writer, a better friend and a better beloved. -- Maya Angelou
While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated. -- Maya Angelou
I thought at the time that it was noble to bear the ills one had silently. But not so silently that others didn't know one was bearing them. -- Maya Angelou
Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it. -- Maya Angelou
And if a person is religious, I think it's good, it helps you a bit. But if you're not, at least you can have the sense that there is a condition inside you which looks at the stars with amazement and awe. -- Maya Angelou
I love the melodies in the Old Testament, how preachers highlight them when they read from the Scripture. But I was influenced forever by the New Testament. I love the Beatitudes, informing us that the meek shall inherit the earth. -- Maya Angelou
To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That's what Norman Mailer did. That's what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that's what I do - that's what I mean to do. -- Maya Angelou
You can only become great at that thing you're willing to sacrifice for. -- Maya Angelou
All of us knows, not what is expedient, not what is going to make us popular, not what the policy is, or the company policy - but in truth each of us knows what is the right thing to do. And that's how I am guided. -- Maya Angelou
I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself. -- Maya Angelou
Have enough courage to love. -- Maya Angelou
One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest. -- Maya Angelou
Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time. -- Maya Angelou
You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage. -- Maya Angelou
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again. -- Maya Angelou
You may not get what you paid for, but you will pay for what you get. -- Maya Angelou
I admire people who dare to take the language, English, and understand it and understand the melody. -- Maya Angelou
Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life. -- Maya Angelou
The world had taken a deep breath and was having doubts about continuing to revolve. -- Maya Angelou
I do hope that young men and women will start to think for themselves and start to take responsibility for their own thoughts. -- Maya Angelou
I know for sure that loves saves me and that it is here to save us all. -- Maya Angelou
Some of us are timid. We think we have something to lose so we don't try for that next hill. -- Maya Angelou
Depending on who I am talking about or who's talking through me - if the person is a kind of hip-hop, or rhythm and blues person, or if the person is a kind of old-fashion gothic, meaning gothic attitude, then that will determine what form the poem will take. -- Maya Angelou
Some people cannot see a good thing when it is right here, right now. Others can sense a good thing coming when it is days, months, or miles away. -- Maya Angelou
You only are free when you realize you belong no place - you belong every place - no place at all. -- Maya Angelou
Annie, everybody has a policy. In this world you have to have a policy. Now, my policy is I don't treat colored people. -- Maya Angelou
When I passed forty I dropped pretense, 'cause men like women who got some sense. -- Maya Angelou
Spirit is an invisible force made visible in all life. -- Maya Angelou
I thought if war did not include killing, I'd like to see one every year. -- Maya Angelou
I love the song 'I Hope You Dance' by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it. -- Maya Angelou
I'm a writer and writers either have good memories or nothing at all. -- Maya Angelou
I am convinced that words are things, and we simply don't have the machinery to measure what they are. I believe that words are tangible things ... -- Maya Angelou
The writer has to take the most used, most familiar objects - nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs - ball them together and make them bounce, turn them a certain way and make people get into a romantic mood; and another way, into a bellicose mood. I'm most happy to be a writer. -- Maya Angelou
We are here to love each other.
That is why you are alive.
That is what life is for. -- Maya Angelou
Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet. -- Maya Angelou
When you get, give. -- Maya Angelou
Segregation shaped me; education liberated me. -- Maya Angelou
My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine. -- Maya Angelou
Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it. -- Maya Angelou
If it is true that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, isn't it also true a society is only as healthy as its sickest citizen and only as wealthy as its most deprived? -- Maya Angelou
Avarice cripples virtue and lies in ambush for honesty. My -- Maya Angelou
As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them. -- Maya Angelou
Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable. -- Maya Angelou
I think a number of the leaders are, whether you like it or not, in the hip-hop generation. And when they understand enough, they'll do wonders. I count on them. -- Maya Angelou
Putting down on paper what you have to say is an important part of writing, but the words and ideas have to be shaped and cleaned, cleaned as severely as a dog cleans a bone, cleaned until there's not a shred of anything superfluous. -- Maya Angelou
On this platform of peace, we can create a language
to translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other. -- Maya Angelou
I know why the caged bird sings. -- Maya Angelou
People have to feel needed. Frequently, we just offer a job and 'perks.' We don't always offer people a purpose. When people feel there is a purpose and that they're needed, there's not much else to do except let them do the work. -- Maya Angelou
If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded. -- Maya Angelou
It's the fire in my eyes, And the flash of my teeth, The swing in my waist, And the joy in my feet. I'm a woman Phenomenally. -- Maya Angelou
If you're always trying to be normal you'll never know how amazing you can be. -- Maya Angelou
You can't really know where you are going until you know where you have been. -- Maya Angelou
Human beings love poetry. They don't even know it sometimes ... whether they're the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber ... they're listening to poetry. -- Maya Angelou
Dr. [Martin Luther] King was a human being. He had a sense of humor which was wonderful. -- Maya Angelou
The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes. -- Maya Angelou
You may not remember what a person said to you, you may not remember what a person did to you, but you will never forget how a person made you feel! -- Maya Angelou
The thorn from the bush one has planted, nourished and pruned pricks more deeply and draws more blood. -- Maya Angelou
When I write, I tend to twist my hair. Something for my small mind to do, I guess. -- Maya Angelou
We must infuse our lives with art. Our national leaders must be informed that we want them to use our taxes to support street theatre in order to oppose street gangs. We should have a well-supported regional theatre in order to oppose regionalism and. -- Maya Angelou
Live life as if it were created just for you. -- Maya Angelou
I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss -- Maya Angelou
God puts rainbows in the clouds so that each of us - in the dreariest and most dreaded moments - can see a possibility of hope. -- Maya Angelou
I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw some things back. -- Maya Angelou
Whenever I'm around some who is modest, I think, 'Run like hell and all of fire.' You don't want modesty, you want humility. -- Maya Angelou
There is something more - the spirit, or the soul. I think that that quality encourages our courtesy and care and our minds. And mercy, and identity. -- Maya Angelou
I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass. -- Maya Angelou
If someone shows you the first time who they are, believe them. -- Maya Angelou
In all my work, I try to say - 'You may be given a load of sour lemons, why not try to make a dozen lemon meringue pies?' -- Maya Angelou
Have a purpose to your life: Purpose does not mean having a job ... You can have a job and still be unfulfilled. -- Maya Angelou
This conference ? of, for and about women ? is, in itself, a rainbow in the clouds. When numerous women come together and show that they care, not only for themselves but also for each other, that is the occasion when a rainbow is shining down on somebody else. -- Maya Angelou
In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn't really, absolutely know what whites looked like. -- Maya Angelou
Everybody in the world wants the same thing ... to be needed ... a job that he/she can do well ... to love somebody ... Everybody ... There's no mystery. -- Maya Angelou
The honorary duty of a human being is to love. -- Maya Angelou
I had to trust life and believe that life loved the person who dared to live it. -- Maya Angelou
I am a very religious person, so it is the presence of God, the constant unwavering, unrelenting presence of God which continues to help me to keep a character which I am proud to show. -- Maya Angelou
One person, with good purpose, can, constitute the majority. -- Maya Angelou
It is my neck and my life. I will live it whole or not at all. He -- Maya Angelou
The only way out of something is all the way through it. -- Maya Angelou
Look heavenward and speak the word aloud. Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud. Peace. -- Maya Angelou
Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean. -- Maya Angelou
If you want to know how important you are to the world, stick your finger in a pond and pull it out. Will the hole remain? When -- Maya Angelou
You can only accomplish what I really love. Do not take the money as a goal. Instead, pursue the things you passionate about, and do good to others can not take my eyes off you -- Maya Angelou
Love life. Engage in it. Give it all you've got. Love it with a passion because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it. -- Maya Angelou
Lord keep Your arm around my shoulder and Your hand over my mouth. -- Maya Angelou
The only thing you own is your story. Make sure it's a good one. -- Maya Angelou
There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you. -- Maya Angelou
Genet suggested that colonialism would crumble from the weight of its ignorance, its arrogance and greed, and that the oppressed would take over the positions of their former masters. They would be no better, no more courageous and no more merciful. I -- Maya Angelou
It's a wonderful thing to know that there is something to know there is something greater than I am, and that is God itself. -- Maya Angelou
We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated. -- Maya Angelou
Independence is a heady draft, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more. -- Maya Angelou
The truth brings the past into the present and prepares us for the future. That's what truth does -- Maya Angelou
When you learn, teach, when you get, give. -- Maya Angelou
Your life is much more important that you can imagine ... it is your first treasure. -- Maya Angelou
I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is. -- Maya Angelou
I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. -- Maya Angelou
A joyful spirit is evidence of a grateful heart. -- Maya Angelou
Every Day you should reach out and touch someone -- Maya Angelou
A horse needs a tail more than one season. -- Maya Angelou
The humorless puzzle of inequality and hate. His experience raised the question of worth and values, of aggressive inferiority and aggressive arrogance. -- Maya Angelou
I am overwhelmed by the grace and persistence of my people. -- Maya Angelou
Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. -- Maya Angelou
they had not come home, but had left one familiar place of painful memory for another strange place with none. The -- Maya Angelou
Look what you've already come through! Don't deny it. Say I'm stronger than I thought I was -- Maya Angelou
she must provide a blanket of stability, which warms but does not suffocate, and she must tell her children the truth about the power of white power without suggesting that it cannot be challenged. -- Maya Angelou
That child would stumble over the pattern in a rug. -- Maya Angelou
The truth will lead me to all. -- Maya Angelou
Let me tell so much truth. I want to tell the truth in my work. The truth will lead me to all. -- Maya Angelou
At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself. -- Maya Angelou
It is very dangerous to make a person larger than life because, then, young men and women are tempted to believe, well, if he was that great, he's inaccessible, and I can never try to be that or emulate that or achieve that. -- Maya Angelou
Preparation is rarely easy and never beautiful. -- Maya Angelou
To be angry is very good. It burns out things and leaves nutrients in the soil. You should always be ready to be angry at injustice and cruelty. -- Maya Angelou
Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option. -- Maya Angelou
I've learned, I still have a lot to learn -- Maya Angelou
Don't lose what you had to get something which just may not work. -- Maya Angelou
The only way you can be a mark is if you want something for nothing. If you're greedy, you're set up. -- Maya Angelou
Nothing will work unless you do. -- Maya Angelou
Wouldn't take nothing for my journey now. -- Maya Angelou
Tell the truth and not the facts. -- Maya Angelou
See, you don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the right thing, then you do it without thinking. -- Maya Angelou
Age is nothing; waking up is everything. -- Maya Angelou
We French, we have never, never, never had slavery, so we feel we don't understand the American racism. Maybe -- Maya Angelou
Christians already? It seems to me that it takes a lifetime of work. -- Maya Angelou
You should never make someone a priority who views you as an option. -- Maya Angelou
Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution. -- Maya Angelou
It's so tedious writing cookbooks or writing the recipes because I've never been much of a measurer. But to write a book, you have to measure everything. -- Maya Angelou
The idea of overcoming is always fascinating to me, because few of us realize how much energy we have expended just to be here today. -- Maya Angelou
Success is loving life and daring to live it. -- Maya Angelou
A person is the product of their dreams. So make sure to dream great dreams. And then try to live your dream. -- Maya Angelou
Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more. -- Maya Angelou
All knowledge is spendable currency, depending on the market. -- Maya Angelou
They were assured that they were going to be the only inhabitants of that milk and honey... -- Maya Angelou
I like to have guns around. I don't like to carry them. -- Maya Angelou
Your skin like dawn
Mine like dusk.
One paints the beginning
of a certain end.
The other, the end of a
sure beginning.
from Passing Time -- Maya Angelou
Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible, and live long lives. -- Maya Angelou
Believe people when they tell you who they are. They know themselves better than you. -- Maya Angelou
Being a woman is hard work. -- Maya Angelou
Those are facts, but facts, to a child, are merely words to memorize. -- Maya Angelou
If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so prayerfully. However, the wisest thing you can do is be present in the present ... gratefully. -- Maya Angelou
If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be. -- Maya Angelou
You never get over the fear of writing. -- Maya Angelou
We are all human; therefore, nothing human can be alien to us. -- Maya Angelou
I have no modesty. Modesty is a learned affectation. It's like decal stuck up on a person. -- Maya Angelou
Be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. -- Maya Angelou
The trouble for the thief is not how to steal the chief's bugle, but where to blow it, -- Maya Angelou
We need language to tell us who we are, how we feel, what we're capable of- to explain the pains and glory of our existence. -- Maya Angelou
I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. -- Maya Angelou
On the day of your birth, the Creator filled countless storehouses, set aside for your use and yours alone. -- Maya Angelou
Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity. -- Maya Angelou
Preach it, I say preach it. -- Maya Angelou
Removed from their own day of glorious release -- Maya Angelou
We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike. -- Maya Angelou
The human heart ... tells us that we are more alike than we are unalike. -- Maya Angelou
Shakespeare must be a black girl. -- Maya Angelou
The devil lives in our mistakes, the lord lives in our rights. Who lives in our ignorance, and who wins after all? -- Maya Angelou
Is it true the ribs can tell The kick of a beast from a Lover's fist? -- Maya Angelou
The intensity with which young people live demands that they "blank out" as often as possible. -- Maya Angelou
Faith is the evidence of the unseen. -- Maya Angelou
There is no place where God is not. -- Maya Angelou
I may never be known as a philanthropist, but I certainly am a lover of mankind, and I will give freely of my resources. -- Maya Angelou
I want all my senses engaged. Let me absorb the world's variety and uniqueness. -- Maya Angelou
The black mother perceives destruction at every door, ruination at each window, and even she herself is not beyond her own suspicion. -- Maya Angelou
More triumphant stories rainbowed around the -- Maya Angelou
Without the presence and energy of art in our lives, we are capable of engaging in heartless activities without remorse and cruelties with clear consciences. -- Maya Angelou
I think the more we know the better we are. I mean not just facts. The more we know about each other, the closer we are to learn something about our selves. -- Maya Angelou
Because of our routines we forget that life is an ongoing adventure. -- Maya Angelou
Don't let anybody raise you. You've been raised. -- Maya Angelou
I think we ought to give ourselves more time. We should be more patient with ourselves and with each other. -- Maya Angelou
You think you may not be heard. Speak anyway. -- Maya Angelou
I was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing. -- Maya Angelou
People don't always remember what you say or even what you do, but they always remember how you make them feel. -- Maya Angelou
The human heart is so delicate and sensitive that it always needs some tangible encouragement to prevent it from faltering in its labor. The human heart is so robust, so tough, that once encouraged it beats its rhythm with a loud unswerving insistency. -- Maya Angelou
There is a true yearning to respond to the singing river and wise rock. -- Maya Angelou
I keep hitting the escape button but I am still here! -- Maya Angelou
Its not where your dreams take you, its where you take your dreams. -- Maya Angelou
I did work in a strip club, but I didn't strip. I danced, and I became very popular. -- Maya Angelou
You can see in others what they don't see in themselves and what the world doesn't see in them, -- Maya Angelou
Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. -- Maya Angelou
I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right. -- Maya Angelou
Inscribed on the temple of Apollo -- Maya Angelou
A leader sees greatness in other people. He nor she can be much of a leader if all she sees is herself. -- Maya Angelou
If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me? -- Maya Angelou
I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one. -- Maya Angelou
A societies needs determines their ethics -- Maya Angelou
When you learn, teach," she said frequently. "When you get, give. -- Maya Angelou
Through the centuries, we faced down death by daring to hope. -- Maya Angelou
Their faces shone with the delight of their souls. -- Maya Angelou
Don't trust people who don't laugh -- Maya Angelou
All the strong black birds of promise who defy the odds and gods and sing their sings -- Maya Angelou
Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman. -- Maya Angelou
One must learn to care for oneself first, so that one can then dare to care for someone else. -- Maya Angelou
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. -- Maya Angelou
Let the brain go to work, let it meet the heart and you will be able to forgive. -- Maya Angelou
Facts can obscure the truth. -- Maya Angelou
I live in an atmosphere of music. -- Maya Angelou
To make a difference is not a matter of accident, a matter of casual occurrence of the tides. People choose to make a difference. -- Maya Angelou
Intelligence always had a pornographic influence on me. -- Maya Angelou
I did what I knew.. when I knew better, I did better -- Maya Angelou
Very few people grow up -- Maya Angelou
Tragedy, no matter how sad, becomes boring to those not caught in its addictive caress. -- Maya Angelou
It may be enough, however, to have it said that we survive in exact relationship to the dedication of our poets (include preachers, musicians, and blues singers). -- Maya Angelou
We have it in us to be splendid. -- Maya Angelou
When we know better, we do better. -- Maya Angelou
One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping. -- Maya Angelou
It was a large heart with lots of hearts growing smaller inside, and piercing from the outside rim to the smallest heart was an arrow. -- Maya Angelou
I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life. -- Maya Angelou
I hope that I may always desire more than I can accomplish. -- Maya Angelou
The laughter was sour and not really directed at white women. It was a traditional ruse that was used to shield the black vulnerability; we laughed to keep from crying. -- Maya Angelou
As soon as healing takes place, go out and heal somebody else. -- Maya Angelou
I think that everyone thought that the Depression like everything else, was for the white-folks, so it had nothing to do with them. -- Maya Angelou
Anger is like fire. It burns all clean. -- Maya Angelou