Maya Angelou Quotes

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

Anything that works against you can also work for you once you understand the Principle of Reverse.

Seek patience and passion in equal amounts. Patience alone will not build the temple. Passion alone will destroy its walls.

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

Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude.

I became the kind of parent my mother was to me.

Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us. We need hours of aimless wandering or spates of time sitting on park benches, observing the mysterious world of ants and the canopy of treetops.

I could fall in love with a sumo wrestler if he told stories and made me laugh. Obviously, it would be easier if someone was African-American and lived next door and went to the same church. Because then I wouldn't have to translate.

Until blacks and whites see each other as brother and sister, we will not have parity. It's very clear.

Yet it is only love which sets us free.

The country didn't get that way in a week; we've had years and years of getting behind in our economy. So President [Barack] Obama stepped into a hellhole and people wanted him to change it as soon as he came in. But he's got his adversaries to deal with in the House and Senate, so it's not easy.

I do not think of myself as unusually creative. I think we all come from the creator, each human being streaming with the glory. So each one of us is creative.

Strictly speaking, one cannot legislate love, but what one can do is legislate fairness and justice. If legislation does not prohibit our living side by side, sooner or later your child will fall on the pavement and I'll be the one to pick her up. Or one of my children will not be able to get into the house and you'll have to say, "Stop here until your mom comes here." Legislation affords us the chance to see if we might love each other.

Live life as if it were created just for you.

In the fifties, you have your beauty as a treat. I thought that until I hit the sixties.In your sixties, life decides to reward you with certain kinds of profound appreciation, so that people name their children and schools and libraries after you! And you still have your sexuality and your sensuality. If you want your sexuality, you still have it.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive

You can't get too high for somebody to bring you down.

In a magazine, one can get - from cover to cover - 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being.

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.

Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence neither speed up nor slow down add to nor diminish it is an imponderably valuable gift.

Hope is born again in the faces of children.

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.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, without it, you can practice no other.

I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.

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.

A friend may be waiting behind a stranger's face.

I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me, if I do that well enough, then I'll be able to look after someone else -- the children or the husband or the elderly. But I have to look after myself first. I know that some people think that's being selfish, I think that's being self-full.

This is what I am learning, at 82 years old: the main thing is to be in love with the search for truth.

Each one of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm, when we look at each other we must say, I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other and empathize with each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike.

The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.

We need to remember that we are all created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.

A mother's love liberates.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. People know themselves much better than you do. That's why it's important to stop expecting them to be something other than who they are

Try, start always at home. This is my encouragement to all writers, start at home. All virtues and vices begin at home, and then spread abroad.

If a human being dreams a great dream, dares to love somebody; if a human being dares to be Martin King, or Mahatma Gandhi, or Mother Theresa, or Malcolm X; if a human being dares to be bigger than the condition into which she or he was born-it means so can you. And so you can try to stretch, stretch, stretch yourself so you can internalize, 'Homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto. I am a human being, nothing human can be alien to me.' That's one thing I'm learning.

Continue. Be loving and be strong. Be fierce and be kind. And don't give in and don't give up.'

When I write, I tend to twist my hair. Something for my small mind to do, I guess.

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.

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 think the more we know the better we are. I mean not just facts. The more we know about each other, the closer we are to learn something about our selves.

'God put the rainbow in the clouds, not just in the sky'... It is wise to realize we already have rainbows in our clouds, or we wouldn't be here. If the rainbow is in the clouds, then in the worst of time, there is the possibility of seeing hope... We can say 'I can be a rainbow in the cloud for someone yet to be.' That may be our calling.

One isn't born with courage. One develops it by doing small courageous things.

I am never proud to participate in violence, yet I know that each of us must care enough for ourselves that we can be ready and able to come to our own defence when and wherever needed.

Don't let anybody raise you. You've been raised.

There are some nights when sleep plays coy, aloof and disdainful. And all the wiles that I employ to win its service to my side are useless as wounded pride, and much more painful.