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


Maya Angelou

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Maya Angelou had the ability to glean inspiration out of pain.
THE PROPHET OF LIFE
Don't kneel please. Sometimes people put people on pedestals so they can see them more clearly and k...
MAYA ANGELOU
I've conducted the Boston Pops! Imagine that! Me! Maya Angelou! I've sang and danced at La S...
MAYA ANGELOU
You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - i...
MAYA ANGELOU
Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccess...
MAYA ANGELOU
I feel very honored that I got a chance to work with Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey.
STANLEY CLARKE
While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated.
MAYA ANGELOU
The kindnesses … I never forget them. And so they keep one from becoming bitter. They encourage yo...
JEFFREY M. ELLIOT
Thank you so much for supporting me from the day I stepped foot into the music industry. It really m...
MARY J. BLIGE
I don't know how much longer I'll be around. I'll probably be writing when the Lord says...
MAYA ANGELOU
Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.
UNSOURCED, MISATTRIBUTED TO MAYA ANGELOU
Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its desti...
JOY LINCOLN
Frequently, I have been asked how I got to be this way. How did I, born black in a white country, po...
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
Soft you day, be velvet soft,
My true love approaches,
Look you bright, you dusty sun, <...
MAYA ANGELOU
I am an English major in school with an emphasis in creative writing. I think hearing Maya Angelou s...
FRED SAVAGE
If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain...
MAYA ANGELOU
Some critics will write 'Maya Angelou is a natural writer' - which is right after being a natural he...
MAYA ANGELOU
My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God - I thank God every time I think of it...
MAYA ANGELOU
You did the best you could, the best you knew how at the time." It was something like that. From Opr...
OPRAH WINFREY
From Maya Angelou I began to believe that I, too, someday, could be a writer, and I also learned how...
DIRK BENEDICT
Maya Angelou was the voice of three generations. Her poetry spanned our journey, chronicled our hear...
DONNA BRAZILE
There is no theoretical study of motherhood. You know, before I became a mother, I did play a mother...
JOAN CHEN
Some critics will write 'Maya Angelou is a natural writer' - which is right after being a na...
MAYA ANGELOU
There was a possibility that God really did love me, me Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the...
MAYA ANGELOU
The great thing about being the son of Maya Angelou is that I had the good fortune to grow up around...
GUY JOHNSON
Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the br...
MAYA ANGELOU
Even great, best selling writers produce works that fall flat from expectations. This writing thing ...
NANCY ARROYO RUFFIN
People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only b...
MAYA ANGELOU
The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man ...
MAYA ANGELOU
My father never kissed me, hugged me or told me that he loved me. As my only living parent, he becam...
IYANLA VANZANT
Maya Angelo...
LENNIE GOODINGS
You're the kind of man my mother warned me about.
CHRISTINE FEEHAN
We have a rolling gag on the show. I once had to sing with Natalie Cole, Della Reese and Maya Angelo...
ROMA DOWNEY
I'm certainly not a perfect mother, but I'm trying to be what my mother wasn't for me. M...
DOROTHY HAMILL
Pieces of me, I'm giving to you. In the words that I say and the things that I do.
SHELLI THOMPSON
Maya Angelou, the famous African American poet, historian, and civil rights activist who is hailed b...
MICHAEL N. CASTLE
My mother always read to me as a child. I really believe that bonding time between a parent and chil...
MARY ENGELBREIT
Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.
ATTRIBUTED TO MAYA AANGELOU
My mother was the worst kind of stage mother. She would make me and my younger sister and brother li...
RENEE FLEMING
The Maya Angelou Research Center on Minority Health has a national conference every other year. This...
MAYA ANGELOU
My father was one of 11. He was an attorney. My mother worked for the Syracuse newspaper as a column...
SIOBHAN FALLON HOGAN
It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already tra...
MAYA ANGELOU
The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same t...
MAYA ANGELOU
My mother was everything to me…and then I got married…and my husband became everything to me. It...
CéCILE RISCHMANN
My mother thinks I am the best. And I was raised to always believe what my mother tells me.
DIEGO MARADONA
I didn't know that my life would change so much in a year, I was pregnant, Got married, became a mot...
VANESSA MOJICA
What distinguished my life from my brother's is that my mother didn't like me. When I became...
JAMAICA KINCAID
Maya Angelou is a very prolific writer. You can read her stuff down once and sort of walk away, but ...
STANLEY CLARKE
My mother opened a bank account for me when I made $60 on my first day of work as an extra. She'...
LAURA DERN
Before I was married to Martin and became a King, I was a proud Scott, shaped by my mother's dis...
CORETTA SCOTT KING
My mother would say it is literally ghost writers who come to me (Tan is the author of what became T...
AMY TAN
America's liberal arts universities have long been safe zones for leftist thinking, protected iv...
BEN SHAPIRO
My mother made a choice. And when I was younger, I judged her for making that choice. Then I got old...
JOSE ANTONIO VARGAS
My father was a businessman, but my mother was an intellectual. She cared about culture, politics, a...
JORGE M. PEREZ
My mother said to me, "If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will ...
PABLO PICASSO
I am singular in my calling in life. A single mother to my children and a single parent to my siblin...
LEAH DANCEL
My mother is, my father certainly was. They were kind of the local intelligentsia in the town where ...
ALISON BECHDEL
My mother was kind and forgiving and would take in all the waifs and strays in our neighbourhood; we...
TOMMY HILFIGER
I was born 20 years after my eldest sister. I was the pampered child. That kind of love gives you an...
CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN
I became kind of like the village blacksmith after the invention of the automobile, ... There just w...
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER
I read everything. I'll read a John Grisham novel, I'll sit and read a whole book of poems b...
JESSYE NORMAN
Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young ...
MAYA ANGELOU
Some say that pregnancy make a woman an instant mother. To that I say, I became an instant woman the...
EFRAT CYBULKIEWICZ
My mother said to me, 'If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you w...
PABLO PICASSO
My entire life changed when I became a mother - my priorities, my understanding, appreciation of lif...
KOURTNEY KARDASHIAN
My mother used to pitch to me and my father would shag balls. If I hit one up the middle close to my...
EDDIE MATHEWS
When I think of my childhood, I see my mother, the complete sixties parent, decked in purple frappe ...
HAMISH BOWLES
I think the artistic side of architecture was natural to me. My mother was an artist and a poet.
I. M. PEI
For me, already being part of a single parent household and knowing it was just me and my mom, you&#...
LEBRON JAMES
When I was a child my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you becom...
PABLO PICASSO
Of course, there are those critics - New York critics as a rule - who say, 'Well, Maya Angelou h...
MAYA ANGELOU
My mother, my psychiatrist and an assortment of sedatives eventually convinced me I was delusional.
WAYNE GERARD TROTMAN
I was the black sheep of the family, and my mother never really understood me.
ANDRE RIEU
Ballet became this escape for me. I feel like I was on my own a lot. I was searching for stability, ...
MISTY COPELAND
The experience of poetry could bring my mother back to me. Poetry offers a different kind of solace ...
NATASHA TRETHEWEY
I started hustling at 12, my mother hustled ahead of me. I was only allowed to because they knew me.
CURTIS JACKSON
I got the stern end of the stick. It was kind of that iron fist. I am who I am today because of my m...
KEVIN HART
My mom has always been kind of my backbone. She keeps me strong. She is a mother, a friend. She is r...
AERIN LAUDER
When I was 11, even though we were poor, my mother was a fan of movies from the west. She used to br...
JOHN WOO
The English was really my mother, it was never me. Being the daughter of my father, I always felt ve...
CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG
I was raised by a mother who told me I was great every day of my life.
ADAM SANDLER
I'd have to say I'm most proud of my mentoring camp that I do in Dallas every year for one h...
STEVE HARVEY
I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took ...
SANDRA CISNEROS
Oh, my dear! I’m afraid you’ve mistaken
me for someone else! My name is Rhea Silvia. I was ...
RICK RIORDAN
I grew up without a father, who was kept a mystery to me. There was a sense of uprootedness, things ...
JOHN IRVING
When I was a child, my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you beco...
PABLO PICASSO
My mother-in-law was with me during all four of my births and when she was sitting next to me holdin...
PATRICIA HEATON
My family never took me to church except a couple of times. But when I was 12, I hung out with this ...
BRIAN WELCH
I kind of like the position of being the fair-haired savior of my mother.
PATTY DUKE
It was not until I was in my forties, in the fifth decade of my life, that the sense of place, the s...
BARBARA COONEY
Then I went back to my mother when I was 13 and she was ready for me.
MAYA ANGELOU
When it came to my childhood - growing up in a single-parent home, often struggling financially - my...
MISTY COPELAND
When I was a kid, my daily routine was playing make-believe, and I kind of created these stories thr...
NINA ARIANDA
My father was frightened of his mother. I was frightened of my father and I am damned well going to ...
KING GEORGE V
My father worked, and my mother played bridge. Every time I went out of the house, I was chauffeur-d...
J. G. BALLARD
My father is black and my mother is white. Therefore, I could answer to either, which kind of makes ...
WENTWORTH MILLER
I don't know if I have a favorite color.
KATE MIDDLETON
It's very special having a new little girl.
KATE MIDDLETON
As a girl my temper often got out of bounds. But one day when I became angry at a friend over some t...
ELIZABETH KENNY

More Maya Angelou

In a magazine, one can get - from cover to cover - 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to li...
MAYA ANGELOU
Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.
MAYA ANGELOU
Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper ...
MAYA ANGELOU
Encouragement to all women is - let us try to offer help before we have to offer therapy. That is to...
MAYA ANGELOU
My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some com...
MAYA ANGELOU
There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.
MAYA ANGELOU
Shakespeare - I was very influenced - still am - by Shakespeare. I couldn't believe that a white...
MAYA ANGELOU
Though I do manage to mumble around in about seven or eight languages, English remains the most beau...
MAYA ANGELOU
The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it ove...
MAYA ANGELOU
In a long meter hymn, a singer - they call it 'lays out a line.' And then the whole church j...
MAYA ANGELOU
I think a number of the leaders are, whether you like it or not, in the hip-hop generation. And when...
MAYA ANGELOU
I like to have guns around. I don't like to carry them.
MAYA ANGELOU
If I'm the people's poet, then I ought to be in people's hands - and, I hope, in their h...
MAYA ANGELOU
I admire people who dare to take the language, English, and understand it and understand the melody.
MAYA ANGELOU
I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, 'No. No, I'...
MAYA ANGELOU
I was born in St. Louis but lived there just for a few minutes in my life.
MAYA ANGELOU
I like to speak on matters which matter to human beings, and almost everything matters to human bein...
MAYA ANGELOU
I was very blessed to have family and friends, but particularly family, who told me I was not only a...
MAYA ANGELOU
Living in a state of terror was new to many white people in America, but black people have been livi...
MAYA ANGELOU
I was a dancer for many years. I was a premier dancer with 'Porgy and Bess,' the opera. And ...
MAYA ANGELOU
I've read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of '...
MAYA ANGELOU
All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.
MAYA ANGELOU
All information belongs to everybody all the time. It should be available. It should be accessible t...
MAYA ANGELOU
I speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English.
MAYA ANGELOU
I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my b...
MAYA ANGELOU
Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to Californ...
MAYA ANGELOU
The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.
MAYA ANGELOU
Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become u...
MAYA ANGELOU
One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can...
MAYA ANGELOU
I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool - and I'm not any of those - to say that I don't w...
MAYA ANGELOU
I got my own back.
MAYA ANGELOU
If you want what you're saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will a...
MAYA ANGELOU
I agree with Balzac and 19th-century writers, black and white, who say, 'I write for money.'...
MAYA ANGELOU
Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continui...
MAYA ANGELOU
I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels.
MAYA ANGELOU
Don't let the incidents which take place in life bring you low. And certainly don't whine. Y...
MAYA ANGELOU
We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, ac...
MAYA ANGELOU
I have a feeling that I make a very good friend, and I'm a good mother, and a good sister, and a...
MAYA ANGELOU
I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings.
MAYA ANGELOU
During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You hav...
MAYA ANGELOU
I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you...
MAYA ANGELOU
In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.
MAYA ANGELOU
Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry,...
MAYA ANGELOU
My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some p...
MAYA ANGELOU
If I walked into the kitchen without washing my hands as a kid, I'd hear a loud 'A-hem!'...
MAYA ANGELOU
When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and su...
MAYA ANGELOU
Fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a ...
MAYA ANGELOU
Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.
MAYA ANGELOU
Once you appreciate one of your blessings, one of your senses, your sense of hearing, then you begin...
MAYA ANGELOU
While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone ...
MAYA ANGELOU
The sadness of the women's movement is that they don't allow the necessity of love. See, I d...
MAYA ANGELOU
Whenever I want to laugh, I read a wonderful book, 'Children's Letters to God.' You can ...
MAYA ANGELOU
Eating is so intimate. It's very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you w...
MAYA ANGELOU
My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to ...
MAYA ANGELOU
You have to develop ways so that you can take up for yourself, and then you take up for someone else...
MAYA ANGELOU
Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more.
MAYA ANGELOU
The best comfort food will always be greens, cornbread, and fried chicken.
MAYA ANGELOU
Nothing will work unless you do.
MAYA ANGELOU
Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.
MAYA ANGELOU
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.
MAYA ANGELOU
I was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing.
MAYA ANGELOU
If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth...
MAYA ANGELOU
There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.
MAYA ANGELOU
Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacr...
MAYA ANGELOU
Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any...
MAYA ANGELOU
Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'
MAYA ANGELOU
Until blacks and whites see each other as brother and sister, we will not have parity. It's very...
MAYA ANGELOU
I have great respect for the past. If you don't know where you've come from, you don't k...
MAYA ANGELOU
Bitterness is cancer - it eats upon the host. It doesn't do anything to the object of its disple...
MAYA ANGELOU
I'm working at trying to be a Christian, and that's serious business. It's like trying t...
MAYA ANGELOU
Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.
MAYA ANGELOU
We all need the waters of the Mercy River. Though they don't run deep, there's usually enough, just ...
MAYA ANGELOU
The loss of young first love is so painful that it borders on the ludicrous.
MAYA ANGELOU
When things were very bad his soul just crawled behind his heart and curled up and went to sleep
MAYA ANGELOU
Language. I loved it. And for a long time I would think of myself, of my whole body, as an ear.
MAYA ANGELOU
Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise...
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 ...
MAYA ANGELOU
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achie...
MAYA ANGELOU
The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned...
MAYA ANGELOU
Let's tell the truth to people. When people ask, 'How are you?' have the nerve sometimes to answer t...
MAYA ANGELOU
I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

(Popular misquo...
MAYA ANGELOU
If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go o...
MAYA ANGELOU
When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.
MAYA ANGELOU
I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will...
MAYA ANGELOU
I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.
MAYA ANGELOU
When Great Trees Fall

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
li...
MAYA ANGELOU
Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any oth...
MAYA ANGELOU
Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.
MAYA ANGELOU
I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, 'I love you.' ... There is an African sa...
MAYA ANGELOU
Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.
MAYA ANGELOU
Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the br...
MAYA ANGELOU
A woman's heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her.
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...
MAYA ANGELOU
When someone shows you who they are believe them; the first time.
MAYA ANGELOU
We need much less than we think we need.
MAYA ANGELOU
The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.
MAYA ANGELOU
What sets one Southern town apart from another, or from a Northern town or hamlet, or city high-rise...
MAYA ANGELOU
If on Judgement Day I were summoned by St. Peter to give testimony to the used-to-be sheriff's act o...
MAYA ANGELOU
You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encoun...
MAYA ANGELOU
Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: I'm with you kid. Let's go.
MAYA ANGELOU
Life loves the liver of it.
MAYA ANGELOU
A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
MAYA ANGELOU
I answer the heroic question Death where is thy sting? It is here in my heart and mind and memories
MAYA ANGELOU
...there is a difference between being convinced and being stubborn. I
MAYA ANGELOU
We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, ...
MAYA ANGELOU
If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go o...
MAYA ANGELOU
Each of us has the right and the responsibility to asses the road which lie ahead and those over whi...
MAYA ANGELOU
Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence -- neither speed up nor slow down,...
MAYA ANGELOU
I believe that every person is born with talent.
MAYA ANGELOU
A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's gre...
MAYA ANGELOU
Something made greater by ourselves and in turn that makes us greater.
MAYA ANGELOU
The sadness of the women's movement is that they don't allow the necessity of love. See, I don't per...
MAYA ANGELOU
A woman who is convinced that she deserves to accept only the best challenges herself to give the be...
MAYA ANGELOU
The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind o...
MAYA ANGELOU
Education helps one case cease being intimidated by strange situations.
MAYA ANGELOU
The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and ...
MAYA ANGELOU
It is only out of ignorance that people are cruel, because they really don
MAYA ANGELOU
My life has been one great big joke, a dance that's walked a song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I al...
MAYA ANGELOU
Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes...
MAYA ANGELOU
At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistanc...
MAYA ANGELOU
I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but...
MAYA ANGELOU
My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have th...
MAYA ANGELOU
All of childhood's unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there. ...
MAYA ANGELOU
Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if t...
MAYA ANGELOU
Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.
MAYA ANGELOU
The need for change bulldozed road down the center of my mind.
MAYA ANGELOU
If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complai...
MAYA ANGELOU
If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.
MAYA ANGELOU
I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be...
MAYA ANGELOU
I answer the heroic question "Death, where is they sting?" with "It is here in my heart and mind and...
MAYA ANGELOU
We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the thr...
MAYA ANGELOU
If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain...
MAYA ANGELOU
I do not believe that the accident of birth makes people sisters and brothers. It makes them sibling...
MAYA ANGELOU
The thorn from the bush one has planted, nourished and pruned pricks more deeply and draws more bl...
MAYA ANGELOU
Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, "I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoe...
MAYA ANGELOU
If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go ...
MAYA ANGELOU
The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amaze...
MAYA ANGELOU
If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.
MAYA ANGELOU
You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don't make money your goal. Instead, p...
MAYA ANGELOU
I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad itseems today, life does go on, and it will be ...
MAYA ANGELOU
Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, w...
MAYA ANGELOU
I believe talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it. You can plug into ...
MAYA ANGELOU
When you wish someone joy, you wish them peace,love, prosperity, happiness... all the good things.
MAYA ANGELOU
If men are God's gift to women, then God must really love gag gifts
MAYA ANGELOU
A woman's beauty is not a gift to man - only a bribe
MAYA ANGELOU
There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.
MAYA ANGELOU
Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: "I'm with you kid. Let's go."
MAYA ANGELOU
My grandmother took me to church on Sunday all day long, every Sunday into the night. Then Monday ev...
MAYA ANGELOU
I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know...
MAYA ANGELOU
I'm a religious woman. And I feel I have responsibility. I have no modesty at all. I'm even ...
MAYA ANGELOU
Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that...
MAYA ANGELOU
As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men de...
MAYA ANGELOU
If you will have a person enslaved, the first thing you must do is convince yourself that the person...
MAYA ANGELOU
The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amaze...
MAYA ANGELOU
To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball the...
MAYA ANGELOU
The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned...
MAYA ANGELOU
We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men... We are who we are...
MAYA ANGELOU
I thank God I'm myself and for the life I'm given to live and for friends and lovers and bel...
MAYA ANGELOU
If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.
MAYA ANGELOU
It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Be...
MAYA ANGELOU
The language of all the interpretations, the translations, of the Judaic Bible and the Christian Bib...
MAYA ANGELOU
I read the Bible to myself; I'll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to h...
MAYA ANGELOU
I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So ...
MAYA ANGELOU
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
MAYA ANGELOU
All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more ...
MAYA ANGELOU
We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are m...
MAYA ANGELOU
I'm grateful to intelligent people. That doesn't mean educated. That doesn't mean intell...
MAYA ANGELOU
You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, ...
MAYA ANGELOU
I love the melodies in the Old Testament, how preachers highlight them when they read from the Scrip...
MAYA ANGELOU
When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
MAYA ANGELOU
I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I&#...
MAYA ANGELOU
You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot -...
MAYA ANGELOU
I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself ...
MAYA ANGELOU
If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.
MAYA ANGELOU
It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is...
MAYA ANGELOU
If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.
MAYA ANGELOU
All great achievements require time.
MAYA ANGELOU
Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
MAYA ANGELOU
You can't forgive without loving. And I don't mean sentimentality. I don't mean mush. I ...
MAYA ANGELOU
I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.
MAYA ANGELOU
Most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. T...
MAYA ANGELOU
There's something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more ...
MAYA ANGELOU
I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind.
MAYA ANGELOU
I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people ...
MAYA ANGELOU
It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.
MAYA ANGELOU
We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can...
MAYA ANGELOU
I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.
MAYA ANGELOU
I work very hard, and I play very hard. I'm grateful for life. And I live it - I believe life lo...
MAYA ANGELOU
I'm just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.
MAYA ANGELOU
I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.
MAYA ANGELOU
The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else'...
MAYA ANGELOU
Information helps you to see that you're not alone. That there's somebody in Mississippi and...
MAYA ANGELOU
Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessi...
MAYA ANGELOU
One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we can...
MAYA ANGELOU
If we don't plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And y...
MAYA ANGELOU
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived...
MAYA ANGELOU
I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaki...
MAYA ANGELOU
What humility does for one is it reminds us that there are people before me. I have already been pai...
MAYA ANGELOU
Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother.
MAYA ANGELOU
We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.
MAYA ANGELOU