Maya Angelou Quotes - Page 2

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
Maya Angelou
In an unfamiliar culture, it is wise to offer no innovations, no suggestions, or lessons. The epitome of sophistication is utter simplicity.
Maya Angelou
Language is man's way of communicating with his fellow man and it is language alone which separates him from the lower animals.
Maya Angelou
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
Lovers think quite different thoughtswhile lying side by side.
Maya Angelou
Out of the huts of history's shameI riseUp from a past that's rooted in painI riseI'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.Leaving behind nights of terror and fearI riseInto a daybreak that's wondrously clearI riseBringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,I am the dream and the hope of the slave.I riseI riseI rise.
Maya Angelou
You saw me bludgeoned by circumstance.Lost, injured, hurt by chance.I screamed to the heavens....loudly screamed....Trying to change our nightmares into dreams...
Maya Angelou
Take a day to heal from the lies you’ve told yourself and the ones that have been told to you.
Maya Angelou
As soon as healing takes place, go out and heal somebody else.
Maya Angelou
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 defense when and wherever needed.
Maya Angelou
Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.
Maya Angelou
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.
Maya Angelou
I'm young as morningand fresh as dew.Everybody loves meand so do you.
Maya Angelou
This bed yawnsbeneath the weightof our absent selves.
Maya Angelou
Alone"Lying, thinkingLast nightHow to find my soul a homeWhere water is not thirstyAnd bread loaf is not stoneI came up with one thingAnd I don’t believe I’m wrongThat nobody,But nobodyCan make it out here alone.Alone, all aloneNobody, but nobodyCan make it out here alone.There are some millionairesWith money they can’t useTheir wives run round like bansheesTheir children sing the bluesThey’ve got expensive doctorsTo cure their hearts of stone.But nobodyNo, nobodyCan make it out here alone.Alone, all aloneNobody, but nobodyCan make it out here alone.Now if you listen closelyI’ll tell you what I knowStorm clouds are gatheringThe wind is gonna blowThe race of man is sufferingAnd I can hear the moan,‘Cause nobody,But nobodyCan make it out here alone.Alone, all aloneNobody, but nobodyCan make it out here alone.
Maya Angelou
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.
Maya Angelou
That day, I learned that I could be a giver by simply bringing a smile to another person. The ensuing years have taught me that a kind word, a vote of support is a charitable gift. I can move over and make another place for someone. I can turn my music up if it pleases, or down if it is annoying. I may never be known as a philanthropist, but I certainly am a lover of mankind, and I will give freely of my resources.
Maya Angelou
My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more intelligent and more educated than college professors.
Maya Angelou
I’m grateful for being here, for being able to think, for being able to see, for being able to taste, for appreciating love – for knowing that it exists in a world so rife with vulgarity, with brutality and violence, and yet love exists. I’m grateful to know that it exists.
Maya Angelou
I don't believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.
Maya Angelou
The customs are as formalised as an eighteenth-century minuet, and a child at the race's knee learns the moves and twirls by osmosis and observation.
Maya Angelou
The“b” word and the “n” word are like poison, whether you take poison from a vial or pour it into Bavarian crystal, it is still poison.
Maya Angelou
Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.
Maya Angelou
When things were very bad his soul just crawled behind his heart and curled up and went to sleep
Maya Angelou
You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
Maya Angelou
You can't use up creativity. The more you use the more you have.
Maya Angelou
Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure. . . Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain flexible enough to notice and admit when what we expected to happen did not happen. We need to remember that we are created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.
Maya Angelou
You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
Maya Angelou
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.
Maya Angelou
I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.
Maya Angelou
Words are things. You must be careful, careful about calling people out of their names, using racial pejoratives and sexual pejoratives and all that ignorance. Don’t do that. Some day we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things. They get on the walls. They get in your wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, and your clothes, and finally in to you.
Maya Angelou
Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.
Maya Angelou
Go," she whispered. "Go. Show them you spell your name W-O-M-A-N.
Maya Angelou
Frequently, I have been asked how I got to be this way. How did I, born black in a white country, poor in a society where wealth is adored and sought after at all costs, female in an environment where only large ships and some engines are described favourably by using the female pronoun-how did I get to be Maya Angelou?
Maya Angelou
She said, 'No, you learned that you have power - power and determination. I love you and I am proud of you. With those two things, you can go anywhere and everywhere.
Maya Angelou
The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic admiration.
Maya Angelou
I am a WomanPhenomenally.Phenomenal Woman,that's me.
Maya Angelou
To be allowed, no, invited into the private lives of strangers, and to share their joys and fears, was a chance to exchange the Southern bitter wormwood for a cup of mead with Beowulf or a hot cup of tea and milk with Oliver Twist.
Maya Angelou
If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities.
Maya Angelou
Continue to be bold, courageous. Try to chose the wisest thing and once you’ve chosen the wisest thing go out and try to achieve it. Be it.
Maya Angelou
We need the courage to create ourselves daily, to be bodacious enough to create ourselves daily — as Christians, as Jews, as Muslims, as thinking, caring, laughing, loving human beings. I think that the courage to confront evil and turn it by dint of will into something applicable to the development of our evolution, individually and collectively, is exciting, honorable.
Maya Angelou
There is nothing quite so tragic as a young cynic, because it means the person has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
Maya Angelou
We need to develop courage, and we need to develop it in small ways first..... You develop a little courage, so that if you decide, "I will not stay in rooms where women are belittled; I will not stay in company where races, no matter who they are, are belittled; I will not take it; I will not sit around and accept dehumanising other human beings: - if you decide to do that in small ways, and you continue to do it - finally you realize you've got so much courage. Imagine it - you've got so much courage that people want to be around you. They get a feeling that they will be protected in your company.
Maya Angelou
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 Angelou
My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring, still.
Maya Angelou
I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare.
Maya Angelou
The black mother perceives destruction at every door, ruination at each window, and even she herself is not beyond her own suspicion. She questions whether she loves her children enough- or more terribly, does she love them too much? Do her looks cause embarrassment- or even terrifying, is she so attractive her sons begin to desire her and her daughters begin to hate her. If she is unmarried, the challenges are increased. Her singleness indicates she has rejected or has been rejected by her mate. Yet she is raising children who will become mates. Beyond her door, all authority is in the hands of people who do not look or think or act like her children. Teachers, doctors, sales, clerks, policemen, welfare workers who are white and exert control over her family’s moods, conditions and personality, yet within the home, she must display a right to rule which at any moment, by a knock at the door, or a ring in the telephone, can be exposed as false. In the face of this contradictions she must provide a blanket of stability, which warms but does not suffocate, and she must tell her children the truth about the power of white power without suggesting that it cannot be challenged.
Maya Angelou
The human heart is so delicate and sensitive that it always needs some tangible encouragement to prevent it from faltering in its labor. The human heart is so robust, so tough, that once encouraged it beats its rhythm with a loud unswerving insistency.
Maya Angelou
All my ways of being are musical and mysterious.Yet I embrace you openly.Ripe with expectancy.
Maya Angelou
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
Maya Angelou
Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.
Maya Angelou
On this platform of peace, we can create a languageto translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.
Maya Angelou
Every person needs to take one day away.  A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future.  Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence.  Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.  Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.
Maya Angelou
I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.
Maya Angelou
While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of mans humanity to a man.
Maya Angelou
Let's tell the truth to people. When people ask, 'How are you?' have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully. You must know, however, that people will start avaoiding you because, they, too, have knees that pain them and heads that hurt and they don't want to know about yours. But think of it this way: If people avoid you, you will have more time to meditate and do fine research on a cure for whatever truly afflicts you.
Maya Angelou
You are very kind and very intelligent and those elements are not always found together. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, and my mother - yes, you belong in that category. Here, give me a kiss.
Maya Angelou
When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.
Maya Angelou
Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.
Maya Angelou
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.
Maya Angelou