Quotes by 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.
What is a fear of living? It's being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself - for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don't know what you're here to do, then just do some good.
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.
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.
All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.
I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.
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.
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.
I wasn't a pretty girl. I was six feet tall at 15, you know.
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.
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.'
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.
At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.
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.
It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.
Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.
A cynical young person is almost the saddest sight to see, because it means that he or she has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
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.
The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.
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.
If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.
I speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English.
When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
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.
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.
