Quotes by Maya Angelou
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I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. So at this wonderful, young age of 65, I don't know yet what the Lord has for me to do. I try to live up to the energy and to the calling, but I wouldn't dare say I have even scratched the surface yet.

The desire to reach hearts is wise.

Continue to be bold, courageous. Try to choose the wisest thing and once you've chosen the wisest thing go out and try to achieve it. Be it.

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.

My name had lost its ring of familiarity and I had to be nudged to go and receive my diploma.

A mother's love liberates.

Rainbows are people whose lives are bright, shining examples for others.

I've had rainbows in my clouds.

Each of us has the power and responsibility to become a rainbow in the clouds.

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?

All my ways of being are musical and mysterious.
Yet I embrace you openly.
Ripe with expectancy.

The Holy Spirit upon my left leads my feet without ceasing into the camp of the righteous and into the tents of the free.

Anger is like fire. It burns all clean.

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.

Jimmy Baldwin was a whirlwind who stirred everything and everybody. He lived at a dizzying pace and I loved spinning with him.

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.

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.

The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.
They hear the first and last of every Tree
Speak to humankind today. Come to me, here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside the River.

Don't bring negative to my door.

One must know not just how to accept a gift, but with what grace to share it.

Everything costs and costs the earth.

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

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I have need of a friend. There is one and only one who will give the air from his failing lungs for my body's mend. And that one is my love.

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.

While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of mans humanity to a man.

Lighting: a hundred Watts
Detroit, Newark and New York
Screeching nerves, exploding minds
lives tied to
a policeman's whistle
a welfare worker's doorbell
finger.

Sisterhood means if you happen to be in Burma and I happen to be in San Diego and I'm married to someone who is very jealous and you're married to somebody who is very possessive, if you call me in the middle of the night, I have to come.

To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.

I don't trust any revolution where love is not allowed.

See you don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the right thing you do it without thinking.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible.

I've conducted the Boston Pops! Imagine that! Me! Maya Angelou! I've sang and danced at La Scala!

You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere.

You can see in others what they don't see in themselves and what the world doesn't see in them.

It is only out of ignorance that people are cruel, because they really don't think it will come back.

When was the last time anyone ever told you how important you are?

There is no place where God is not.

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.

You think you may not be heard. Speak anyway.

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.

The question is not how to survive, but how to thrive with passion, compassion, humor and style.

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.

I note the obvious differences between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.

I did what I knew.. when I knew better, I did better.

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.

Look what you've already come through! Don't deny it. Say I'm stronger than I thought I was.

Give yourself time just to be with yourself.

People don't always remember what you say or even what you do, but they always remember how you make them feel.

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.

We must be warriors in the struggle against ignorance.

Lord keep your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth.

The happy heart runs with the river, floats on the air, lifts to the music, soars with the eagle, hopes with the prayer.

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.

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.

We are here to love each other.
That is why you are alive.
That is what life is for.

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.

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.

The area where we are the greatest is the area in which we inspire, encourage and connect with another human being.

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.

If you're going to live, leave a legacy. Make a mark on the world that can't be erased.

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.

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!

Every journey begins with a single step.

Making a living is not the same thing as making a life.

Still I'll rise.

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.

Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it empowers us to develop courage; to trust that courage and build bridges with it;
to trust those bridges and cross over them so we can attempt to reach each other.

A person is the product of their dreams. So make sure to dream great dreams. And then try to live your dream.

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.

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.

Just like moons and suns,
With certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.

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.

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.

To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.

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.

Ain't nothin' to it, but to do it.

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?

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.

If you're for the right thing, you do it without thinking.

Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.