Maya Angelou Quotes (173 Quotes)


    i believe the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare

    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.

    Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.

    All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.

    Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.


    I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.

    I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

    Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.

    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.

    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.

    The thorn from the bush one has planted, nourished and pruned pricks more deeply and draws more blood.


    Living a life is like constructing a building if you start wrong, you'll end wrong.


    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.

    Listen carefully to what country people call mother wit. In those homely sayings are couched the collective wisdom of generations.

    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,

    Look at my life. I'm floating like mercury around the earth. My footprints shine with stardust. All because I love you. All because you love me.

    God puts rainbows in the clouds so that each of us- in the dreariest and most dreaded moments- can see a possibility of hope.

    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.

    If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.

    I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition -- about what we can endure, dream, fail at, and still survive.


    In all my work what I try to say is that as human beings we are more alike than we are unalike.

    Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

    If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.

    Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone.

    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.


    The Maya Angelou Research Center on Minority Health has a national conference every other year. This year the focus of our conference is on cardiovascular disease or heart disease and how to translate research into practice.

    Yet if we are bold,
    love strikes away the chains of fear
    from our souls.

    The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear.

    Someone was hurt before you wronged before you beaten before you humiliated before you raped before you yet, someone SURVIVED

    Education helps one case cease being intimidated by strange situations.

    The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.

    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.

    women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible and live long lives


    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.

    To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power.


    Ive learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.

    Work is something made greater by ourselves and in turn that makes us greater.

    life is a gift, and i try to respond with grace and courtesy

    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 something back.

    We are weaned from our timidity
    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.

    She was a sister-friend to me, we called each other 'children sisters.' She was a great wife, obviously, and a wonderful mother and a great woman, a great American. When I think of great Americans she's one of the people I think of.

    I do not trust people who don't love themselves and yet tell me, 'I love you.' There is an African saying which is Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.

    The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.

    Some of us are timid. We think we have something to lose so we don't try for that next hill.


    Related Authors


    Shel Silverstein - Khalil Gibran - Alexander Pope - William Congreve - Rainer Maria Rilke - Octavio Paz - Lucretius - Euripides - Edward Young - A. E. Housman


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