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Maya Angelou

53 quotes

Selected quotes · 53
01
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 AngelouCourage
02
Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.
Maya AngelouCourage
03
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 AngelouCourage
04
Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.
Maya AngelouLove
05
I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.
Maya AngelouCourage
06
The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.
Maya AngelouLife
07
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 AngelouCourage
08
Life loves the liver of it.
Maya AngelouLife
09
It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.
Maya AngelouSelf-belief
10
Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.
Maya AngelouCourage
11
If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.
Maya AngelouHappiness
12
Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.
Maya AngelouLove
13
If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.
Maya AngelouFriendship
14
If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.
Maya AngelouMindset
15
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 AngelouCourage
16
When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.
Maya AngelouHappiness
17
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 AngelouJustice
18
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.
Maya AngelouLove
19
We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.
Maya AngelouFailure
20
Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.
Maya AngelouWisdom
21
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.
Maya AngelouWisdom
22
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya AngelouFreedom
23
You will face many defeats in life, but never let yourself be defeated.
Maya AngelouCourage
24
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 AngelouCourage
25
Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.
Maya AngelouWisdom
26
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 AngelouJustice
27
All great achievements require time.
Maya AngelouSuccess
28
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
Maya AngelouHappiness
29
It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.
Maya AngelouTime
30
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
Maya AngelouCourage
31
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 AngelouWisdom
32
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 AngelouFaith
33
In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.
Maya AngelouWisdom
34
I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.
Maya AngelouLife
35
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
Maya AngelouWisdom
36
I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.
Maya AngelouTime
37
If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.
Maya AngelouCreativity
38
There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.
Maya AngelouLife
39
Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.
Maya AngelouAction
40
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
Maya AngelouCreativity
41
The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.
Maya AngelouTime
42
The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.
Maya AngelouCreativity
43
Nothing will work unless you do.
Maya AngelouFreedom
44
My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive.
Maya AngelouLife
45
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 AngelouFaith
46
Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
Maya AngelouWisdom
47
The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
Maya AngelouLife
48
No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.
Maya AngelouFreedom
49
Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!
Maya AngelouWisdom
50
The loss of young first love is so painful that it borders on the ludicrous.
Maya AngelouFailure
51
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 AngelouFriendship
52
I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss.
Maya AngelouFailure
53
You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.
Maya AngelouWisdom