Maya Angelou Quotes

I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, 'I love you.' ... There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.

~ Maya Angelou

Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.

~ Maya Angelou

First best is falling in love. Second best is being in love. Least best is falling out of love. But any of it is better than never having been in love.

~ Maya Angelou

We, unaccustomed to courageexiles from delightlive coiled in shells of lonelinessuntil love leaves its high holy templeand comes into our sightto liberate us into life.Love arrivesand in its train come ecstasiesold memories of pleasureancient histories of pain.Yet if we are bold,love strikes away the chains of fearfrom our souls.We are weaned from our timidityIn the flush of love's lightwe dare be braveAnd suddenly we seethat love costs all we areand will ever be.Yet it is only lovewhich sets us free.

~ Maya Angelou

In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours.In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.

~ Maya Angelou

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass.

~ Maya Angelou

When Great Trees FallWhen great trees fall,rocks on distant hills shudder,lions hunker downin tall grasses,and even elephantslumber after safety.When great trees fallin forests,small things recoil into silence,their senseseroded beyond fear.When great souls die,the air around us becomeslight, rare, sterile.We breathe, briefly.Our eyes, briefly,see witha hurtful clarity.Our memory, suddenly sharpened,examines,gnaws on kind wordsunsaid,promised walksnever taken.Great souls die andour reality, bound tothem, takes leave of us.Our souls,dependent upon theirnurture,now shrink, wizened.Our minds, formedand informed by theirradiance,fall away.We are not so much maddenedas reduced to the unutterable ignoranceof dark, coldcaves.And when great souls die,after a period peace blooms,slowly and alwaysirregularly. Spaces fillwith a kind ofsoothing electric vibration.Our senses, restored, neverto be the same, whisper to us.They existed. They existed.We can be. Be and bebetter. For they existed.

~ Maya Angelou

I am convinced that most people do not grow up...We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias.

~ Maya Angelou

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

~ Maya Angelou

This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before.

~ Maya Angelou

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

~ Maya Angelou

What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain.

~ Maya Angelou

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.(Popular misquote of You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.)

~ Maya Angelou

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

~ Maya Angelou

Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.

~ Maya Angelou

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

~ Maya Angelou

I sustain myself with the love of family.

~ Maya Angelou

All great achievements require time.

~ Maya Angelou

Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.

~ Maya Angelou

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill,of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill, for the caged bird sings of freedom.

~ Maya Angelou

Living well is an art that can be developed: a love of life and ability to take great pleasure from small offerings and assurance that the world owes you nothing and that every gift is exactly that, a gift.

~ Maya Angelou

Each of us has the right and the responsibility to assess the roads which lie ahead, and those over which we have traveled, and if the future road looms ominous or unpromising, and the roads back uninviting, then we need to gather our resolve and, carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that as well.

~ Maya Angelou

Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.

~ Maya Angelou

Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.

~ Maya Angelou

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.

~ Maya Angelou

I am overwhelmed by the grace and persistence of my people.

~ Maya Angelou

People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.

~ Maya Angelou

I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss

~ Maya Angelou

Your crown has been bought and paid for. Put it on your head and wear it.

~ Maya Angelou

I find relief from the questions only when I concede that I am not obliged to know everything. I remind myself it is sufficient to know what I know, and that what I know, may not always be true.

~ Maya Angelou

It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us.

~ Maya Angelou

I answer the heroic question, 'Death, where is thy sting?' with 'It is in my heart and mind and memories.

~ Maya Angelou

It’s the fire in my eyes, And the flash of my teeth, The swing in my waist, And the joy in my feet. I’m a woman Phenomenally.

~ Maya Angelou

You may write me down in historyWith your bitter, twisted lies,You may tread me in the very dirtBut still, like dust, I'll rise.Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? 'Cause I walk like I've got oil wellsPumping in my living room.Just like moons and like suns,With the certainty of tides,Just like hopes springing high,Still I'll rise.Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops.Weakened by my soulful cries.Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard'Cause I laugh like I've got gold minesDiggin' in my own back yard.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.Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surpriseThat I dance like I've got diamondsAt the meeting of my thighs? 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

A certain person wondered whya big strong girl like mewouldn't keep a jobwhich paid a normal salary.I took my time to lead herand to read her every page.Even minimal peoplecan't survive on minimal wage.A certain person wondered whyI wait all week for you.I didn't have the wordsto describe just what you do.I said you had the motionof the ocean in your walk,and when you solve my riddlesyou don't even have to talk.

~ Maya Angelou

I couldn't tell fact from fiction,Or if the dream was trueMy only sure predictionIn this world was you.I'd touch your features inchly. Beard love and dared the cost, The sented spiel reeled me unreal And I found my senses lost.

~ Maya Angelou

Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.

~ Maya Angelou

When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.

~ Maya Angelou

Whining is not only graceless, but can be dangerous. It can alert a brute that a victim is in the neighborhood.

~ Maya Angelou

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

~ Maya Angelou