Maya Angelou Quotes

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.

You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don't make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off of you.

Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.

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."

Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

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.

I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.

There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.

Be the rainbow in someone else's cloud.

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!

When you learn, teach, when you get, give.

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning 'Good morning' at total strangers.

A Woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing. She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination prepared to be herself and only herself

If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. Please remember that your difficulties do not define you. They simply strengthen your ability to overcome.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.

You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

Nothing will work unless you do.

I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. Try to be a rainbow in someone else's cloud. Do not complain. 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.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.

All great achievements require time.

I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare.

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

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."

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

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.

At the end of the day people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.

We spend precious hours fearing the inevitable. It would be wise to use that time adoring our families, cherishing our friends and living our lives.

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.

When you wish someone joy, you wish them peace, love, prosperity, happiness... all the good things.

Love life. Engage in it. Give it all you've got. Love it with a passion because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it.

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.

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that's walked a song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

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.

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still like dust, I'll rise.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.

Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible, and live long lives.

Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

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

We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.

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

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.

At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.

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

Wouldn't take nothing for my journey now.

I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back.

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

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.

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

Life loves the liver of it.

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.

Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs?

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'

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.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.

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.

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.

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.

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.

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

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

The honorary duty of a human being is to love.

The thorn from the bush one has planted, nourished and pruned pricks more deeply and draws more blood.

Jealousy in romance is like salt in food. A little can enhance the savor, but too much can spoil the pleasure and, under certain circumstances, can be life-threatening.

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 ent

I do not believe that the accident of birth makes people sisters and brothers. It makes them siblings. Gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood are conditions people have to work at. It's a serious matter. You compromise, you give, you take, you stand firm, and you're relentless...And it is an investment. Sisterhood means if you happen to be in Burma and I happen to be in San Diego and I'm married to someone who is very jealous and you're married to somebody who is very possessive, if you call me in the middle of the night, I have to come.

Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, "I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway."

For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

I believe that every person is born with talent.

I am capable of what every other human is capable of. This is one of the great lessons of war and life .

I know why the caged bird sings.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone.

One must know not just how to accept a gift, but with what grace to share it.

The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change.

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.

All of childhood's unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there. Heroes and bogey men, values and dislikes, are first encountered and labeled in that early environment. In later years they change faces, places and maybe races, tactics, intensities and goals, but beneath those penetrable masks they wear forever the stocking-capped faces of childhood.

God puts rainbows in the clouds so that each of us - in the dreariest and most dreaded moments - can see a possibility of hope.

The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear.

Education helps one case cease being intimidated by strange situations.

I believe talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it. You can plug into it and light up a lamp, keep a heart pump going, light a cathedral, or you can electrocute a person with it. Electricity will do all that. It makes no