Maya Angelou Quotes
Welcome to Maya Angelou Quotes. Here you will find famous quotes and quotations by Maya Angelou.
Maya Angelou Quotes
Life loves the liver of it.
Nothing will work unless you do.
I believe that every person is born with talent.
Effective action is always unjust.
Achievement brings its own anticlimax.
All great achievements require time.
Be a rainbow in someone else's cloud.
Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances
I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh.
A woman's heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her.
Maya Angelou Quotes
There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.
When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.
If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.
Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.
I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one.
Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.
If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?
Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
Maya Angelou Quotes
A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!
Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you
All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.
Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently.
We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.
Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.
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 Quotes
When you know better you do better.
We need much less than we think we need.
If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.
At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.
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.
Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.
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.
It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.
I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life.
Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art.
Maya Angelou Quotes
When you learn, teach, when you get, give.
Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.
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.
Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.
Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: "I'm with you kid. Let's go."
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.
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.
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 Quotes
Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.
Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.
If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.
I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.
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.
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.
The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.
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.
If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.
Maya Angelou Quotes
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.
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.
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.
The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.
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.
Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.
Some critics will write 'Maya Angelou is a natural writer' - which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.
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.
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 Quotes
Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.
The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
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.
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
The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.
Prejudice is a burden that con uses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.
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.
Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.
There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.
Maya Angelou Quotes
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.
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.
While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man's humanity to man.
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.
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.
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.
There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
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.
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.