Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou > Quotes
Maya Angelou quotes (showing 1-30 of 620)

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but
people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou
61372 likes
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There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
tags: 1970, inspirational, stories, writing
23319 likes
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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, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now
tags: 1993, advice, complaining, inspirational
13658 likes
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When someone shows you who they are believe them; the first time.
Maya Angelou
tags: oprah-s-thank-you-game, people
7716 likes
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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, Letter to My Daughter
tags: be-yourself, inspirational, self-determination
6374 likes
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We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through
to achieve that beauty.
Maya Angelou
tags: inspiration
6277 likes
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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
tags: humor, inspirational, life
5719 likes
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Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't
practice any other virtue consistently.
Maya Angelou
tags: character, consistency, courage, determination, essence, ethos, fortitude, goodness, inspiration, lifelessons, persistence, resolve, self-reliance, strength, virtue, virtues
5136 likes
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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
tags: 1997, annie-clark-tanner-lecture, inspirational, love, trust
4836 likes
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Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to
loneliness.
Maya Angelou
tags: loneliness, music, refuge
4627 likes
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You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be
reduced by them.
tags: be-yourself, self-determination
4499 likes
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Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.
Maya Angelou
4052 likes
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I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.
Maya Angelou
tags: attributed, attributed-no-source, education, intelligence, knowledge, unsourced
3950 likes
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My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion,
some compassion, some humor, and some style
Maya Angelou
3758 likes
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Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.
Maya Angelou
tags: courage, love, trust
3212 likes
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You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Dont make money your
goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people cant
take their eyes off of you.
Maya Angelou
2636 likes
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Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Maya Angelou, Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women
tags: phenomenal-woman
2630 likes
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Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.
Maya Angelou
2569 likes
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A woman's heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her.
Maya Angelou
tags: inspirational
2514 likes
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Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.

tags: 2008, advice
2389 likes
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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
tags: adversity, character, failure, perseverance
2301 likes
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If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?
Maya Angelou
2202 likes
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Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!

Maya Angelou
tags: inspirational
2188 likes
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You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.

Maya Angelou
2179 likes
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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
tags: change, inspirational, self-determination
2008 likes
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The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.
Maya Angelou
tags: ambition, inspirational, wisdom
1978 likes
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Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.

Maya Angelou
tags: music
1924 likes
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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
tags: books, inspirational, library
1785 likes
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No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better
tomorrow.
Maya Angelou
tags: inspirational-quotes
1705 likes
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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
Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
Maya Angelou
tags: anger, bitterness, rage
1432 likes
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I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh.

Maya Angelou
tags: laughter, sense-of-humor
1382 likes
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Most people don't grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit
cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.
Maya Angelou
tags: aging, growing-up
1366 likes
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I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many
years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself
or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and
you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'Well, if I'd known better I'd have
done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,'
and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our
own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we
can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the
real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the
way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as
threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too
asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you
think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell
we should never teach.
Maya Angelou
tags: self-acceptance
1351 likes
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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.
Maya Angelou
tags: being-loved, courage, laugh, love, loving
1344 likes
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Out of the huts of history's shame

I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
Maya Angelou
tags: poem
1342 likes
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There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.
Maya Angelou
tags: truth
1303 likes
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Be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud.

Maya Angelou
1280 likes
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Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its
destination full of hope.
Maya Angelou
tags: love
1233 likes
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Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.
1145 likes
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Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat
life as art.
Maya Angelou
1099 likes
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Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.

Maya Angelou
tags: inner-strength, self-assurance
1088 likes
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When you learn, teach, when you get, give.

Maya Angelou
1058 likes
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Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.
Maya Angelou
tags: antipathy, hatred
1016 likes
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Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith
be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.
Maya Angelou, Celebrations: Rituals of Peace and Prayer
tags: birthday, gratitude, maya-angelou, oprah
1007 likes
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I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one.
Maya Angelou
998 likes
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A friend may be waiting behind a stranger's face.

tags: friendship
967 likes
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I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when
they're gone from your life.
Maya Angelou
tags: family-relationships, parents-and-children
965 likes
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There were people who went to sleep last night,

poor and rich and white and black,
but they will never wake again.
And those dead folks would give anything at all
for just five minutes of this weather
or ten minutes of plowing.
So you watch yourself about complaining.
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.
Maya Angelou
tags: change, life-lessons, transformation
960 likes
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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.
Maya Angelou
tags: smile
924 likes
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We need much less than we think we need.

Maya Angelou
tags: contentment
900 likes
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Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.

Maya Angelou
849 likes
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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
tags: literature, reading, self-discovery, youth
846 likes
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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.
tags: honesty, humanity, self-worth, social-mores
827 likes
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I sustain myself with the love of family.

Maya Angelou
tags: family, inspirational
820 likes
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Be present in all things and thankful for all things.

Maya Angelou
tags: awareness, live-in-the-moment
815 likes
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When we find someone who is brave, fun, intelligent, and loving, we have to thank the
universe.
Maya Angelou
809 likes
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The problem I have with haters is that they see my glory, but they don't know my story...
Maya Angelou
747 likes
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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
tags: falling-in-love, love, lovelessness
740 likes
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When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.

Maya Angelou
The ship of my life may or may not be sailing on calm and amiable seas. The challenging
days of my existence may or may not be bright and promising. Stormy or sunny days,
glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude. If I insist on being pessimistic,
there is always tomorrow. Today I am blessed.
Maya Angelou
719 likes
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When Great Trees Fall

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,

the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
Maya Angelou
tags: american-writers, death, i-shall-not-be-moved, life, maya-angelou, peace, poem, poems, poet, poetry,poets,
soul, souls, trees, when-great-trees-fall, writers, writing
707 likes
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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
Maya Angelou
tags: inspirational
657 likes
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Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them
with shades of deeper meaning.
tags: angelou, meaning, words
648 likes
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You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
Maya Angelou
tags: creativity
613 likes
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I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'.
Maya Angelou
tags: career, earning
594 likes
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I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right
decision.
Maya Angelou
563 likes
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To those who have given up on love: I say, "Trust life a little bit.
Maya Angelou
531 likes
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I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to
dare.
Maya Angelou
tags: bravery, courage
528 likes
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All great achievements require time.

Maya Angelou
tags: inspirational, motivation
525 likes
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I am a Woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal Woman,
that's me.
Maya Angelou
tags: feminism
522 likes
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I want to thank you, Lord, for life and all that's in it.
Thank you for the day and for the hour, and the minute.
Maya Angelou
tags: inspirational
521 likes
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Nothing will work unless you do.

Maya Angelou
tags: inspirational
510 likes
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It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and
there is strength.
Maya Angelou
tags: beauty, diversity, parents, strength, young-people
510 likes
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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.
tags: adulthood, growing-up, life, maturity
481 likes
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Caged Bird
A free bird leaps on the back of the wind
and floats downstream till the current ends
and dips his wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage
can seldom see through his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.
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.
The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn and he names the sky his own.
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
Maya Angelou, The Complete Collected Poems
tags: cage, freedom, poetry
475 likes
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Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions
searched for.
tags: 1993, inspirational, reassurance, reassuring, respite, soothing
462 likes
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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 some things back.
Maya Angelou
tags: wisdom
450 likes
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We, unaccustomed to courage

exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure

ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.
We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
Maya Angelou
tags: courage, fear, freedom, life, lonliness, love, pain, poetry
441 likes
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If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.
Maya Angelou
416 likes
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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
tags: love, perfect-fit
405 likes
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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, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes
tags: acceptance, comfort, home, protection, safety, security
389 likes
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Some people cannot see a good thing when it is right here, right now. Others can sense a
good thing coming when it is days, months, or miles away.
Maya Angelou
374 likes
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Its the fire in my eyes,

And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
Im a woman
Phenomenally.
tags: confidence, poetry, womanhood
352 likes
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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.
tags: absence, break, peace, rest, vacation, work
340 likes
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A woman who is convinced that she deserves to accept only the best challenges herself to
give the best. Then she is living phenomenally.
Maya Angelou
333 likes
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There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to
believing nothing.
Maya Angelou
tags: life-lessons
333 likes
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Had I known that the heart breaks slowly, dismantling itself into unrecognizable plots of
misery... had I known yet I would have loved you, your brash and insolent beauty, your
heavy comedic face and knowledge of sweet delights, but from a distance I would have left
you whole and wholly for the delectation of those who wanted more and cared less.
Maya Angelou, And Still I Rise
326 likes
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Success is loving life and daring to live it.

Maya Angelou
320 likes
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If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities.

Maya Angelou, Poems
Anything that works against you can also work for you once you understand the Principle
of Reverse.
307 likes
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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.
tags: inspirational, philosophy
307 likes
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Whining is not only graceless, but can be dangerous. It can alert a brute that a victim is in
the neighborhood.
tags: inspiration
305 likes
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Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
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, Ill rise.
Maya Angelou
300 likes
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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.
Maya Angelou
tags: live-in-the-moment, senseless-worry
294 likes
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My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.

Maya Angelou
288 likes
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I've learned that I still have a lot to learn.

Maya Angelou
278 likes
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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.
Maya Angelou
272 likes
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The caged bird sings with a fearful trill,

of things unknown, but longed for still,
and his tune is heard on the distant hill,
tags: 1969, inspirational
264 likes
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No one can take the place of a friend, no one.

Maya Angelou
262 likes
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Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it.

Maya Angelou
253 likes
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When you wish someone joy, you wish them peace, love, prosperity, happiness... all the
good things.
Maya Angelou
tags: blessings
238 likes
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Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can't take
their eyes off you.
236 likes
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If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.
Maya Angelou
tags: attributed-no-source, conformity, normal, unsourced
233 likes
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The sisters and brothers that you meet give you the materials which your character uses to
build itself. It is said that some people are born great, others achieve it, some have it thrust
upon them. In truth, the ways in which your character is built have to do with all three of
those. Those around you, those you choose, and those who choose you.
Maya Angelou
231 likes
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Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

Maya Angelou
tags: love
230 likes
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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.
tags: inspirational
225 likes
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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.
Maya Angelou
224 likes
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To those who are given much, much is expected.

Maya Angelou
219 likes
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reduced by them. Try to be a rainbow in someone'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.
tags: 2008
218 likes
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To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating

beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens.
Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier
to die and avoid conflict than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of
maturity.
204 likes
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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.
Maya Angelou
tags: life
194 likes
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I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
tags: phenomenal-woman, woman
193 likes
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Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.
Maya Angelou
tags: poetry
190 likes
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The human heart...tells us that we are more alike than we are unalike.
182 likes
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Live as though life was created for you.

Maya Angelou
181 likes
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The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.
Maya Angelou
179 likes
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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.
Maya Angelou
178 likes
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While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated.
Maya Angelou
tags: defeat, maya-angelou
171 likes
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Ain't nothin' to it, but to do it.

Maya Angelou
I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams,
the fears and the dragons of home under one's skin, at the extreme corners of one's eyes
and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.
tags: home
167 likes
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Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible, and live long lives.
Maya Angelou
165 likes
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Each of us, famous or infamous, is a role model for somebody, and if we aren't, we should
behave as though we are -- cheerful, kind, loving, courteous. Because you can be sure
someone is watching and taking deliberate and diligent notes.
Maya Angelou
164 likes
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One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage,
we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We cannot be kind, true, merciful,
generous, or honest.
Maya Angelou
153 likes
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I dreamt we walked together along the shore. We made satisfying small talk and laughed.
This morning I found sand in my shoe and a seashell in my pocket. Was I only dreaming?
Maya Angelou
tags: friendship, friendship-and-love, friendship-friends
151 likes
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The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes
straight to the heart.
Maya Angelou
149 likes
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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.
tags: inspirational
145 likes
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I believe most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be
otherwise.
tags: 1969, timidity
139 likes
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There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.
Maya Angelou
tags: greed, life
139 likes
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As soon as healing takes place, go out and heal somebody else.

Maya Angelou
tags: healing
133 likes
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Ive got a magic charm

That I keep up my sleeve,
I can walk the ocean floor
And never have to breathe.
Maya Angelou, Life Doesn't Frighten Me
124 likes
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Don't let the man bring you down.

Maya Angelou, The Heart of a Woman
tags: freedom
122 likes
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I hope that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.

Maya Angelou
122 likes
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We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone
in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.
Maya Angelou
tags: prejudice
119 likes
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Strong women- precious jewels all- their humanness is evident in their accessibility. We
are able to enter into the spirit of these women and rejoice in their warmth and courage.
Maya Angelou
118 likes
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The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.
Maya Angelou
113 likes
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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.
tags: inspirational
113 likes
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If you're for the right thing, you do it without thinking.

111 likes
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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.
Maya Angelou
110 likes
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Ritie, don't worry 'cause you ain't pretty. Plenty pretty women I seen digging ditches or
worse. You smart. I swear to God, I rather you have a good mind than a cute behind.
106 likes
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The best candy shop a child can be left alone in, is the library
Maya Angelou
105 likes
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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
tags: faith, inspirational
103 likes
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beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.
tags: youth
102 likes
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We love and lose in China,

we weep on England's moors,
and laugh and moan in Guinea,
and thrive on Spanish shores.
We seek success in Finland,
are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major we're the same.
Maya Angelou
tags: brotherhood-of-man
100 likes
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the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
97 likes
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Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.
Maya Angelou
tags: writing
96 likes
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How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!
Maya Angelou
tags: gender-equality, heroism
95 likes
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What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not
a rat,.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When Im writing, I
write. And then its as if the muse is convinced that Im serious and says, Okay. Okay. Ill
come.
Maya Angelou
tags: writing
94 likes
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Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind,
true, merciful, generous, or honest.
Maya Angelou
93 likes
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We are all human; therefore, nothing human can be alien to us.

Maya Angelou
History, despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage need not
be lived again.
Maya Angelou
91 likes
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Just like moons and suns,

With certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Maya Angelou
88 likes
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Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it allows me to survive, and
better than that, to thrive with passion, compassion, and style.
Maya Angelou
88 likes
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The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are

intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.
85 likes
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That's what you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything
you've got. I've told you many times, 'Cant do is like Dont Care.' Neither of them have a
home.
Maya Angelou
tags: inspirational
81 likes
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I want all my senses engaged. Let me absorb the world's variety and uniqueness.
Maya Angelou
tags: inspirational
80 likes
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Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it,
she stands up for all women.
Maya Angelou
tags: feminism, woman, women-s-rights

78 likes
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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. Dont do that. Some
day well 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
tags: ignorance, meaning, names, root, society, stain, words
78 likes
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love. she liberated me to life, she continued to do that. and when she was in her final
sickness i went out to san francisco and the doctor said she had 3 weeks to live, i asked her
"would you come to north carolina?" she said yes. she had emphysema and lung cancer, i
brought her to my home. she lived for a year and a half ..and when she was finally in
extraneous she was on oxygen and fighting cancer for her life and i remembered her
liberating me, and i said i hoped i would be able to liberate her, she deserved that from me.
she deserved a great daughter and she got one. so in her last days, i said "i understand some
people need permission to go as i understand it you may have done what god put you here
to do. you were a great worker, you must've been a great lover cause a lot of men and if I'm
not wrong maybe a couple of woman risked their lives to love you. you were a piss poor
mother of small children but a you were great mother of young adults, and if you need
permission to go, i liberate you". and i went back to my house, and something said go backi was in my pajamas, i jumped in my car and ran and the nurse said "she just gone". you see
love liberates. it doesn't bind, love says i love you. i love you if you're in china, i love you if
you're across town, i love you if you're in harlem, i love you. i would like to be near you, i
would like to have your arms around me i would like to have your voice in my ear but thats
not possible now, i love you so go. love liberates it doesn't hold. thats ego. love liberates.
Maya Angelou
tags: liberated, love, mothers-and-daughters
77 likes
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Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of
being aware. And the worst part of my awareness was that I didn't know what I was aware
of. I knew I knew very little, but I was certain that the things I had yet to learn wouldn't be
taught to me at George Washington High School.
76 likes
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Here on the pulse of this new day

You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
Into your brother's face, your country
And say simply

Very simply
With hope
Good morning.
Maya Angelou
75 likes
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I'm young as morning

and fresh as dew.
Everybody loves me
and so do you.
Maya Angelou, I Shall Not Be Moved
tags: confidence, youth
75 likes
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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.
tags: black, feminism, i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings, masculity, maya-angelou, racism
73 likes
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I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.

Maya Angelou
72 likes
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At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as
resistance, especially if one had no choice.
tags: acquiescence, surrender
72 likes
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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 commensurate
speed.
Maya Angelou
71 likes
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I do not need to know all things. I remind myself that it is sufficient that I know what I
know and know that without believing that I will always know what I know or that what I
know will always be true.
Maya Angelou
71 likes
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I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a

woman who teaches by being.
Maya Angelou
70 likes
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A person is the product of their dreams. So make sure to dream great dreams. And then try
to live your dream.
70 likes
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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.
Maya Angelou
69 likes
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She comprehended the perversity of life, that in the struggle lies the joy.
69 likes
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Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it empowers us to develop
courage; to trust that courage and build bridges with it;
to trust those bridges and cross over them so we can attempt to reach each other.
Maya Angelou
tags: love
69 likes
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Take the blinders from your vision

take the padding from your ears
and confess you've heard me crying
and admit you've seen my tears.
Maya Angelou
tags: equality, poetry-quotes
69 likes
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You are the sum total of everything you've seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgotit's all right there.
Maya Angelou
69 likes
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Wouldn't take nothing for my journey now.

tags: journey, life
69 likes
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A story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a
Negro civilian on the streetcar, even after he made room for her on the seat. Her
explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well. She
added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on
Iwo Jima. The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an
armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, "Then ask your son to look around
for my arm, which I left over there.
68 likes
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I am overwhelmed by the grace and persistence of my people.

Maya Angelou
tags: family, inspirational
68 likes
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The charitable say in effect, 'I seem to have more than I need and you seem to have less
than you need. I would like to share my excess with you.' Fine, if my excess is tangible,
money or goods, and fine if not, for I learned that to be charitable with gestures and words
can bring enormous joy and repair injured feelings.
66 likes
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Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

Maya Angelou
65 likes
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Women been gittin' pregnant ever since Eve ate that apple.
I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.
Maya Angelou
62 likes
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Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem

By Dr. Maya Angelou
Thunder rumbles in the mountain passes

And lightning rattles the eaves of our houses.
Flood waters await us in our avenues.

Snow falls upon snow, falls upon snow to avalanche
Over unprotected villages.
The sky slips low and grey and threatening.
We question ourselves.
What have we done to so affront nature?
We worry God.
Are you there? Are you there really?
Does the covenant you made with us still hold?
Into this climate of fear and apprehension, Christmas enters,
Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hope
And singing carols of forgiveness high up in the bright air.
The world is encouraged to come away from rancor,
Come the way of friendship.
It is the Glad Season.
Thunder ebbs to silence and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner.
Flood waters recede into memory.
Snow becomes a yielding cushion to aid us
As we make our way to higher ground.
Hope is born again in the faces of children
It rides on the shoulders of our aged as they walk into their sunsets.
Hope spreads around the earth. Brightening all things,
Even hate which crouches breeding in dark corridors.
In our joy, we think we hear a whisper.
At first it is too soft. Then only half heard.
We listen carefully as it gathers strength.
We hear a sweetness.
The word is Peace.
It is loud now. It is louder.
Louder than the explosion of bombs.
We tremble at the sound. We are thrilled by its presence.
It is what we have hungered for.
Not just the absence of war. But, true Peace.
A harmony of spirit, a comfort of courtesies.
Security for our beloveds and their beloveds.
We clap hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas.
We beckon this good season to wait a while with us.

We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come.
Peace.
Come and fill us and our world with your majesty.
We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian,
Implore you, to stay a while with us.
So we may learn by your shimmering light
How to look beyond complexion and see community.
It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time.
On this platform of peace, we can create a language
To translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.
At this Holy Instant, we celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ
Into the great religions of the world.
We jubilate the precious advent of trust.
We shout with glorious tongues at the coming of hope.
All the earth's tribes loosen their voices
To celebrate the promise of Peace.
We, Angels and Mortal's, Believers and Non-Believers,
Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselves
And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation.
Peace, My Brother.
Peace, My Sister.
Peace, My Soul.
Maya Angelou
62 likes
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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.
Maya Angelou
61 likes
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If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the
rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.
61 likes
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When I am writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of,
how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness. I'm trying
for that. But I'm also trying for the language. I'm trying to see how it can really sound. I
really love language. I love it for wate it does for us, how it allows us to explain the pain and
the glory, the nuances and delicacies of our existence. And then it allows us to laugh, allows
us to show wit. Real wit is shown in language. We need language.
Maya Angelou
tags: writing
60 likes
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Life loves the liver of it.

Maya Angelou
60 likes
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Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.

Maya Angelou
tags: education, inspirational, learning, race
59 likes
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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.
tags: bigotry, travel
58 likes
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If you only have one smile in you, give it to the people you love.
Maya Angelou
57 likes
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Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it
become uncomfortable.
Maya Angelou
56 likes
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A certain person wondered why

a big strong girl like me
wouldn't keep a job
which paid a normal salary.
I took my time to lead her
and to read her every page.
Even minimal people
can't survive on minimal wage.
A certain person wondered why

I wait all week for you.
I didn't have the words
to describe just what you do.
I said you had the motion
of the ocean in your walk,
and when you solve my riddles
you don't even have to talk.
tags: love, poetry
54 likes
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The woman who survives intact and happy must be at once tender and tough.
Maya Angelou
54 likes
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We need to remember that we are all created creative and can invent new scenarios as
frequently as they are needed.
Maya Angelou
tags: poet-and-writer
53 likes
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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.
Maya Angelou
53 likes
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A Rock, A River, A Tree

Hosts to species long since departed,
Mark the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long

Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spelling words
Armed for slaughter.
The rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world,
A river sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.
Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.
Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I
And the tree and stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow
And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.
The river sings and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing river and the wise rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the tree.
Today, the first and last of every tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.
Each of you, descendant of some passed on
Traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name,
You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,
You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,
Then forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of other seekers-Desperate for gain, starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot...

You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru,
Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am the tree planted by the river,
Which will not be moved.
I, the rock, I the river, I the tree
I am yours--your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me,
The rock, the river, the tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
Into your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.
Maya Angelou
tags: inspirational-poem
52 likes
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If I could give you one thought, it would be to lift someone up. Lift a stranger up--lift her
up. I would ask you, mother and father, brother and sister, lovers, mother and daughter,
father and son, lift someone. The very idea of lifting someone up will lift you, as well.
Maya Angelou
51 likes
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We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside
ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.
50 likes
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At the end of the day people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember
how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou
48 likes
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In all the institutions I try to be present and accountable for all I do and leave undone. I
know that eventually I shall have to be present and accountable n the presence of God. I do
not wish to be found wanting.
46 likes
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Hope for the best, be prepared for the worse. Life is shocking, but you must never appear
to be shocked. For no matter how bad it is it could be worse and no matter how good it is it
could be better.
Maya Angelou
46 likes
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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.
tags: death, i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings, maya-angelou, racism, rage, youth
45 likes
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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.
tags: christianity, inspirational
45 likes
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Never whine. Whining lets a brute know that a victim is in the neighborhood.
tags: inspirational-life-attitude
45 likes
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We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.

43 likes
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The sadness of the women's movement is that they don't allow the necessity of love. See, I
don't personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed.
Maya Angelou
43 likes
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My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a
mean world with your acts of kindness. Continue to allow humor to lighten the burden of
your tender heart.
Maya Angelou
42 likes
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The world had taken a deep breath and was having doubts about continuing to revolve.
42 likes
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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?
Maya Angelou
tags: still-i-rise
42 likes
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Still I'll rise.

Maya Angelou
41 likes
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Determine to live life with flair and laughter.

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
tags: creativity, life
41 likes
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If funkytown was a trailerpark, this guy would be a double-wide.

Maya Angelou
tags: metaphor
40 likes
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This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before.

Maya Angelou
tags: beautiful, day, life, time
40 likes
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Life likes to be taken by the lapel and told, "I'm with you kid. Let's go!
Maya Angelou
tags: affirmation, inspirational
39 likes
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You should never make someone a priority who views you as an option.
Maya Angelou
37 likes
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If I insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow. Today I am blessed.

Maya Angelou
37 likes
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We are only as blind as we want to be.

Maya Angelou
36 likes
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You can only become great at something you are willing to sacrifice for
Maya Angelou
35 likes
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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.
tags: affluence, god, i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings, maya-angelou, poverty
34 likes
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I know that I'm not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great
that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don't know
how not to.
Maya Angelou, phenomenal woman
34 likes
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Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present
inaccessible.
Maya Angelou
tags: maya-angelou
32 likes
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To grow up is to stop putting blame on parents

Maya Angelou, Becoming Myself: Reflections on Growing Up Female
32 likes
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The intensity with which young people live demands that they "blank out" as often as
possible.
31 likes
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You dwell in whitened castles

with deep and poisoned moats
and cannot hear the curses
which fill your children's throats.
Maya Angelou
30 likes
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Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influenceneither speed up nor
slow down, add to nor diminishit is an imponderably valuable gift.
tags: 1993, time
30 likes
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It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.
30 likes
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When things were very bad his soul just crawled behind his heart and curled up and went
to sleep
tags: bad, belief, heart, soul, youth
30 likes
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Im 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. Im grateful to know that it exists.
Maya Angelou
tags: existence, hope, inspirational-life
30 likes
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I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

Maya Angelou
tags: strength, strength-of-character
29 likes
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He was a simple man who had no inferiority complex about his lack of education, and even
more amazing no superiority complex because he had succeeded despite that lack.
tags: education, inferiority-complex
28 likes
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Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present
inaccessibleWe may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.
Maya Angelou
28 likes
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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
tags: death, letter-to-my-daughter
27 likes
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Love heals. Heals and liberates. I use the word love, not meaning sentimentality, but a
condition so strong that it may be that which holds the stars in their heavenly positions and
that which causes the blood to flow orderly in our veins.
Maya Angelou, Mom & Me & Mom
27 likes
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I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss
tags: knowledge, life, wisdom, youth
27 likes
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In all my work what I try to say is that as human beings we are more alike than we are
unalike.
Maya Angelou
26 likes
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Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of
being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation
(which had itself confessed to the same crime short years before). The command to grow up
at once was more bearable than the faceless horror of wavering purpose, which was youth.
tags: adolescence, adulthood, growing-up, i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings, maturity, maya-angelou, youth
25 likes
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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.
Maya Angelou
25 likes
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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
tags: courage, letter-to-my-daughter
24 likes
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Sister, there are people who went to sleep all over the world last night, poor and rich and
white and black, but they will never wake again. Sister, those who expected to rise did not,
their beds became their cooling boards, and their blankets became their winding sheets.
And those dead folks would give anything, anything at all for just five minutes of this
weather or ten minutes of that plowing that person was grumbling about. So you watch
yourself about complaining, Sister. 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.
tags: change, complaining, gratefulness, whining
23 likes
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I will look after you and I will look after anybody you say needs to be looked after, any way
you say. I am here. I brought my whole self to you. I am your mother.
No human being can be more human than another human being. I liberate you from my
ignorance.
Maya Angelou
23 likes
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I walk into a room

And to a man,
Maya Angelou, Poems
23 likes
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Remember, people will judge you by your actions not your intentions. You may have a
heart of gold but so does a hard-boiled egg.
Maya Angelou
23 likes
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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
tags: relationship
23 likes
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That some people, unable to go to school, were more intelligent and more educated than
college professors.
Maya Angelou
tags: compassion, education, knowledge, life-lessons, understanding
23 likes
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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.
Maya Angelou
tags: insomnia
23 likes
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The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is
that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and
courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room
but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who
buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to
use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body
collective.
tags: crime, i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings, maya-angelou, perspective, racism
22 likes
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Thomas Wolfe warned in the title of Americas great novel that You Cant Go Home Again.
I enjoyed the book but I never agreed with the title. I believe that one can never leave home.
I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and dragons of home under
ones skin, at the extreme corners of ones eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.
Home is that youthful region where a child is the only real living inhabitant. Parents,
siblings, and neighbors, are mysterious apparitions, who come, go, and do strange
unfathomable things in and around the child, the regions only enfranchised citizen.
[]
tags: home, inspirational
22 likes
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I had read a Tale of Two Cities and found it up to my standards as a romantic novel. She
opened the first page and I heard poetry for the first time in my life...her voice slid in and
curved down trough and over the words. She was nearly singing.
22 likes
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We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans
because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves
to other human beings. Thats why we paint, thats why we dare to love someone- because
we have the impulse to explain who we are. Not just how tall we are, or thin but who we
are internally perhaps even spiritually. Theres something, which impels us to show our
inner-souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we
know.
Maya Angelou
22 likes
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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
tags: character, courage
22 likes
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We are missing Michael.

But we do know we had him, and we are the world.
tags: elly-kleinman
21 likes
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Ive learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it
will be better tomorrow. Ive learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way
he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree
lights. Ive learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, youll miss them
when theyre gone from your life. Ive learned that making a living is not the same thing as
making a life. Ive learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. Ive learned that
you shouldnt go through life with a catchers mitt on both hands; you need to be able to
throw something back. Ive learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I
usually make the right decision. Ive learned that even when I have pains, I dont have to be
one. Ive learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a
warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. Ive learned that I still have a lot to learn. Ive
learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people
will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou
tags: inspirational
21 likes
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Faith is the evidence of the unseen.

Maya Angelou
21 likes
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I couldn't tell fact from fiction,

Or if the dream was true
My only sure prediction
In 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
tags: inspiration, poetry
21 likes
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I make writing as much a part of my life as I do eating or listening to music.

Maya Angelou
20 likes
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Mother's life flowed radiant. Flourescent-tipped waves on incoming tides.

Maya Angelou
19 likes
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If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.
Maya Angelou
19 likes
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Soft you day, be velvet soft,

My true love approaches,
Look you bright, you dusty sun,
Array your golden coaches.
Soft you wind, be soft as silk
My true love is speaking.
Hold you birds, your silver throats,
His golden voice I'm seeking.
Come you death, in haste, do come
My shroud of black be weaving,
Quiet my heart, be deathly quiet,
My true love is leaving.
tags: love, maya-angelou, poetry
19 likes
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You are the sum total of everything youve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told,
forgot - its all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure
that my experiences are positive.
Maya Angelou
tags: maya-angelou
19 likes
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Each time I write a book, every time I face that yellow pad, the challenge is so great. I have
written eleven books, but each time I think, Uh oh, theyre going to find out now. Ive run a
game on everybody and theyre going to find me out.
Maya Angelou
19 likes
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He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know
who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.
tags: elly-kleinman
18 likes
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My mother raised me, and then freed me,

Maya Angelou, Even The Stars Look Lonesome
18 likes
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Glory falls around us as we sob a dirge of desolation on the Cross

tags: desolation, dirge, glory, jack-goldenberg
18 likes
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I speak to the Black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition--about
what we can endure, dream, fail at and survive.
Maya Angelou
tags: writing
18 likes
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Let nothing dim the light that shines from within

Maya Angelou
18 likes
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Achievement brings it own anticlimax.

Maya Angelou
17 likes
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In the flush of love's light

we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
Maya Angelou
tags: courage, fear, freedom, life, lonliness, love, pain, poetry
17 likes
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The dread of futility has been my life-long plague.

16 likes
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I answer the heroic question, 'Death, where is thy sting?' with 'It is in my heart and mind
and memories.
Maya Angelou
When members of a society wish to secure that society's rich heritage they cherish their
arts and respect their artists. The esteem with which we regard the multiple cultures offered
in our country enhances our possibilities for healthy survival and continued social
development.
Maya Angelou
16 likes
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Preach it, I say preach it.

16 likes
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Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass

Maya Angelou
tags: humor, inspriational, life
16 likes
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Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be
satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaking need for an
unshakable God. My pretty Black brother was my Kingdom Come.
15 likes
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Oh, Black known and unknown poets, how often have your auctioned pains sustained us?
Who will compute the lonely nights made less lonely by your songs, or by the empty pots
made less tragic by your tales?
If we were a people much given to revealing secrets, we might raise monuments and
sacrifice to the memories of our poets, but slavery cured us of that weakness.
15 likes
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All knowledge is spendable currency, depending on the market.

Maya Angelou
14 likes
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The devil lives in our mistakes, the lord lives in our rights. Who lives in our ignorance, and
who wins after all?
Maya Angelou
tags: ignorance, life, mistakes, right
14 likes
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Those are facts, but facts, to a child, are merely words to memorize.
14 likes
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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.
Maya Angelou
13 likes
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I am convinced that most people do not grow up. We find parking spaces and honor our
credit cards. 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 still innocent and shy as magnolias.
13 likes
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See, you don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the right thing, then
you do it without thinking.
13 likes
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Imagine, I might really become somebody. Someday.

13 likes
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tags: poem
12 likes
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The city became for me the ideal of what I wanted to be as a grown-up. Friendly, but never
gushing, cool but not frigid or distant, distinguished without the awful stiffness.
tags: aspirations, children-s-reminiscences, inspirational
12 likes
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If more Africans had eaten missionaries, the continent would be in better shape
tags: africa, humor
12 likes
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Yet it is only love which sets us free.

Maya Angelou
tags: love
11 likes
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The epitome of sophistication is utter simplicity.

Maya Angelou
11 likes
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This bed yawns

beneath the weight
of our absent selves.
tags: absence, bed, drifting-apart, loneliness, yawn
11 likes
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Water isn't shaped like a river or ocean; it mists invisibly against metal and glass
11 likes
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Graduation, the hush-hush magic time of frills and gifts and congratulations and diplomas,
was finished for me before my name was called. The accomplishment was nothing. The
meticulous maps, drawn in three colors of ink, learning and spelling decasyllabic words,
memorizing the whole of The Rape of Lucrece - it was for nothing. Donleavy had exposed
us.
We were maids and farmers, handymen and washerwomen, and anything higher that we
aspired to was farcical and presumptuous.
10 likes
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Can't Do is like Don't Care. Neither of them have a home.

10 likes
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While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the
quality of mans humanity to a man.
Maya Angelou
tags: ghana, humanity, the-world

10 likes
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As I ate she began the first of what we later called my lessons in living. She said that I
must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people,
unable to go to school, were more educated and even more intelligent than college
professors. She encouraged me to listen carefully to what country people called mother wit.
That in those homely sayings was couched the collective wisdom of generations.
10 likes
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remember this: When you cross my doorstep, you have already been raised. With what you
have learned...you know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. Don't anybody
raise you from the way you have been raised. Know you will have to make adaptations, in
love, in relationships, in friends, in society, in work, but don't let anybody change your
mind.
tags: decency, life-lessons, mother
10 likes
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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
Maya Angelou
10 likes
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I did then what I knew best, when I knew better, I did better. Maya Angelo
Maya Angelou
tags: forgiving-yourself, inspirational, self-help
10 likes
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One person, with good purpose, can, constitute the majority.

10 likes
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With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But 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 wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,
Still I'll rise.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.
But still, like air, I'll rise.
I rise
I rise
I rise
I rise
I rise
I rise
I rise.
Maya Angelou
10 likes
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The honorary duty of a human being is to love.

Maya Angelou
10 likes
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No,nobody but nobody can make it out her alone.

Maya Angelou, Poems
If we lose love and self respect for each other,this is how we finally die
Maya Angelou
9 likes
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Be wary when a naked person offers you his shirt

8 likes
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Hanging softly over the black Singer sewing machine, it looked like magic, and when
people saw me wearing it they were going to run up to me and say, "Marguerite, forgive us,
please, we didn't know who you were," and I would answer generously, "No, you couldn't
have known. Of course I forgive you.
8 likes
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I hope you always find a reason to smile

Maya Angelou
tags: happiness
8 likes
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A wise woman wishes to be no one's enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone's victim.
Maya Angelou
tags: enemy, victim, wise, women
8 likes
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Theb 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
tags: poison, words
8 likes
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Love is a condition so powerful; it may be that which pulls the stars in the firmament. It
may be that which pushes and urges the blood in the veins. Courage: you have to have
courage to love somebody because you risk everything everything.
Maya Angelou
8 likes
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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.
8 likes
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One morning as I was leaving, the director said I didn't have to leave the set anymore.
What happened? Why did they change their ways of treating me? I came to the realization
that it was because I had a mother. My mother spoke highly of me, and to me. But more
important, whether they met her or simply heard about her, she was there with me. She had
my back, supported me. This is the role of the mother, and in that visit I really saw clearly,
and for the first time, why a mother is really important. Not just because she feeds and also
loves and cuddles and even mollycoddles a child, but because in an interesting and maybe
an eerie and unworldly way, she stands in the gap. She stands between the unknown and
the known. In Stockholm, my mother shed her protective love down around me and without
knowing why people sensed that I had value.
tags: inspirational, mothers-and-daughters
8 likes
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If on Judgement Day I were summoned by St. Peter to give testimony to the used-to-be
sheriff's act of kindness, I would be unable to say anything in his behalf. His confidence that
my uncle and every other Black man who heard of the Klan's coming ride would scurry
under their houses to hide in chicken droppings was too humiliating to hear. Without
waiting for Momma's thanks, he rode out of the yard, sure that things were as they should
be and that he was a gentle squire, saving those deserving serfs from the laws of the land,
which he condoned.
tags: 1970
8 likes
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Poetry is music for the human voice. Until you actually speak it or someone speaks it, it
has not come into its own.
Maya Angelou
8 likes
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I dont know about lying for novelists. I look at some of the great novelists, and I think the
reason they are great is that theyre telling the truth. The fact is theyre using made-up
names, made-up people, made-up places, and made-up times, but theyre telling the truth
about the human beingwhat we are capable of, what makes us lose, laugh, weep, fall
down, and gnash our teeth and wring our hands and kill each other and love each other.
Maya Angelou
8 likes
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All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us all that we
are more alike than we are unalike.
8 likes
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Cotton rows crisscross the world

And dead-tired nights of yearning
Thunderbolts on leather strops
And all my body burning
Sugar cane reach up to God
And every baby crying
Shame a blanket of my night
And all my days are dying
tags: poetry
8 likes
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A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
Maya Angelou
7 likes
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Let nothing dim the light that shines from within".

Maya Angelou
tags: maya-angelou-quotes
7 likes
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I was basically good. Not understood, and not even liked, but even so, just, and better than
just. I was merciful.
7 likes
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I'm happy...I laugh as much as I can and cry when I have to, without apology. I think thats
happy.
Maya Angelou
7 likes
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There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.

Maya Angelou
7 likes
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You only are free when you realize you belong no place you belong every place no
place at all.
Maya Angelou, Conversations with Maya Angelou
tags: freedom
7 likes
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His day is done.

Is done.
The news came on the wings of a wind, reluctant to carry its burden.
Nelson Mandelas day is done.
The news, expected and still unwelcome, reached us in the United States, and suddenly our
world became somber.
Our skies were leadened.
His day is done.
We see you, South African people standing speechless at the slamming of that final door
through which no traveller returns.
Our spirits reach out to you Bantu, Zulu, Xhosa, Boer.
We think of you and your son of Africa, your father, your one more wonder of the world.
We send our souls to you as you reflect upon your David armed with a mere stone, facing
down the mighty Goliath.
Your man of strength, Gideon, emerging triumphant.
Although born into the brutal embrace of Apartheid, scarred by the savage atmosphere of
racism, unjustly imprisoned in the bloody maws of South African dungeons.
Would the man survive? Could the man survive?
His answer strengthened men and women around the world.
In the Alamo, in San Antonio, Texas, on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, in
Chicagos Loop, in New Orleans Mardi Gras, in New York Citys Times Square, we watched
as the hope of Africa sprang through the prisons doors.
His stupendous heart intact, his gargantuan will hale and hearty.
He had not been crippled by brutes, nor was his passion for the rights of human beings
diminished by twenty-seven years of imprisonment.

Even here in America, we felt the cool, refreshing breeze of freedom.
When Nelson Mandela took the seat of Presidency in his country where formerly he was not
even allowed to vote we were enlarged by tears of pride, as we saw Nelson Mandelas former
prison guards invited, courteously, by him to watch from the front rows his inauguration.
We saw him accept the worlds award in Norway with the grace and gratitude of the Solon
in Ancient Roman Courts, and the confidence of African Chiefs from ancient royal stools.
No sun outlasts its sunset, but it will rise again and bring the dawn.
Yes, Mandelas day is done, yet we, his inheritors, will open the gates wider for
reconciliation, and we will respond generously to the cries of Blacks and Whites, Asians,
Hispanics, the poor who live piteously on the floor of our planet.
He has offered us understanding.
We will not withhold forgiveness even from those who do not ask.
Nelson Mandelas day is done, we confess it in tearful voices, yet we lift our own to say
thank you.
Thank you our Gideon, thank you our David, our great courageous man.
We will not forget you, we will not dishonor you, we will remember and be glad that you
lived among us, that you taught us, and that you loved us all.
Maya Angelou, His Day Is Done: A Nelson Mandela Tribute
tags: 2014, mandela, nelson-mandela, south-africa
7 likes
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Although there was always generosity in the Negro neighborhood, it was indulged on pain
of sacrifice. Whatever was given by Black people to other Blacks was most probably needed
as desperately by the donor as by the receiver. A fact which made the giving or receiving a
rich exchange.
7 likes
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Few, if any, survive their teens

tags: teens, youth
7 likes
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reduced by them. Try to be a rainbow in someones 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.
7 likes
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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, Poems
tags: fate
7 likes
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Listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God.
Maya Angelou
7 likes
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The trouble for the thief is not how to steal the chief's bugle, but where to blow it,
6 likes
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Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.
Maya Angelou
6 likes
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Whenever I began to question whether God exists, I looked up to the sky and surely there,
right there, between the sun and moon, stands my grandmother, singing a long meter
hymn, a song somewhere between a moan and a lullaby and I know faith is the evidence of
things unseen. And all I have to do is continue trying to be a Christian.
6 likes
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A Conceit
Give me your hand
Make room for me
to lead and follow
you
beyond this rage of poetry.
Let others have
the privacy of
touching words
and love of loss
of love.
For me
Give me your hand.
Maya Angelou
All I got to do is stay black and die.
Maya Angelou
6 likes
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The naturally lonely person does not look for comfort in love, but accepts the variables as
due course.
Maya Angelou, Gather Together in My Name
6 likes
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Very few people grow up

tags: inspirational
6 likes
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If the pretties were expected to make the supreme sacrifice in order to 'belong,' what could
the unattractive female do?
tags: females
6 likes
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Can I do it? I'd rather not try and fail.

That's stupid talk Maya. Every try will not succeed. But if you're going to live, live at all,
your business is trying...You fail, you get up and try again.
6 likes
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What sets one Southern town apart from another, or from a Northern town or hamlet, or
city high-rise? The answer must be the experience shared between the unknowing majority
(it) and the knowing minority (you). 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.
tags: 1970
6 likes
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You can't get too high for somebody to bring you down.
6 likes
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I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little
segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York
City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, Ill be OK. It really helped me
as a child, and that never left me. So I have a special place for every library, in my heart of
hearts.
Maya Angelou
5 likes
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The plague of racism is insidious, entering into our minds as smoothly and quietly and
invisibly as floating airborne microbes enter into our bodies to find lifelong purchase in our
bloodstreams.
Maya Angelou
5 likes
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I looked up the way I was going and back the way I come and since I wasn't satisfied I
stepped off and [found] me a new path.
Maya Angelou
tags: inspirational-success-failure
5 likes
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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
tags: courage, culture, resilience
5 likes
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On this platform of peace, we can create a language

to translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.
Maya Angelou, Celebrations: Rituals of Peace and Prayer
tags: peace
5 likes
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I don't know how much longer I'll be around. I'll probably be writing when the Lord says,
'Maya, Maya Angelou, it's time.
Maya Angelou
tags: maya-angelou-quote, maya-angelou-writer
5 likes
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If you happen to be white in a white country; pretty according to the dictates of fashion;
rich in a country where money is adored, its almost impossible to grow up and to grow up
honest inside. It is almost impossible. Most people dont grow up. Most people age. They
find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that
maturity. What that is, is aging. But to grow up, to take responsibility for the time you take
up, and the space you occupy, to honor every living person for his or her humanity, that is
to grow up.
Maya Angelou
tags: growing-up, maturity, privilege, wisdom
5 likes
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If the heart of Africa remained elusive, my search for it had brought me closer to
understanding myself and other human beings. The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe
place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. It impels mighty ambitions and
dangerous capers. We amass great fortunes at the cost of our souls, or risk our lives in drug
dens from Londons Soho, to San Franciscos Haight-Ashbury. We shout in Baptist
churches, wear yarmulkes and wigs and argue even the tiniest points in the Torah, or
worship the sun and refuse to kill cows for the starving. Hoping that by doing these things,
home will find us acceptable or failing that, that we will forget our awful yearning for it.
5 likes
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If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it change your attitude. Don't
complain
Maya Angelou
tags: attitude, change
5 likes
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The needs of a society determine its ethics,

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If I survived at all, it would be a triumph. If I swam, it would be a miracle. As I unlocked

my door, I thought of my mother putting her age back fifteen years and going into the
merchant marines. I had to try. If I ended in defeat, at least I would be trying. Trying to
overcome was black people's honorable tradition.
5 likes
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Miss Kirwin was that rare educator who was in love with information. I will always believe
that her love of teaching came not so much from her liking for students but from her desire
to make sure that some of the things she knew would find repositories so that they could be
shared again.
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Success is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it
Maya Angelou
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There is nothing a person can't do, and there should be nothing a human being didn't care
about. It was the most positive encouragement I could have hoped for.
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She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.
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You dont want modesty, you want humility. Humility comes from inside out. It says
someone was here before me and Im here because Ive been paid for. I have something to
do and I will do that because Im paying for someone else who has yet to come.
Maya Angelou
tags: humility, modesty
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The word philanthropy was taken from the two Greek words, philo lover of; and anthro
mankind. So, philanthropists are lovers of humanity. They build imposing edifices for
people to work in and to play in. They give huge sums of money to support organizations
which offer better health and education to the society. They are the principal patrons of the
arts. The mention of philanthropy elicits smiles, followed by the sensation of receiving
unexpected good fortune from a generous but faceless source.
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In order to avoid this bitter end, we would all have to be born again, and born with the
knowledge of alternatives. Even then?
tags: dark-humor, life-truth
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When I am writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of,
how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness. I'm trying
for that. But I'm also trying for the language. I'm trying to see how it can really sound. I
really love language. I love it for wate it does for us, how it allows us to explain the pain and
the glory, the nuances and delicacies of our existence. And then it allows us to laugh, allows
us to show wit. Real wit is shown in language. We need language.
Maya Angelou
tags: writing-craft, writing-from-the-heart, writing-inspiration, writing-philosophy

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Many believe that they need company at any cost, and certainly if a thing is desired at any
cost, it will be obtained at all costs. We need to remember and to teach our children that
solitude can be a much-to-be-desired condition. Not only is it acceptable to be alone, at
times it is positively to be wished for. It is in the interludes between being in company that
we talk to ourselves. In the silence we listen to ourselves. Then we ask questions of
ourselves. We describe ourselves, and in the quietude we may even hear the voice of God
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I said, What do I think? That's what I'm asking you? What is there to think? Looks like
he wants you to be his valentine. Louise, I can read. But what does it mean? Oh, you
know. His valentine. His love. There was that hateful word again. That treacherous word
that yawned up at you like a volcano. Well, I won't. Most decidedly I won't. Not ever
again. Have you been his valentine before? What do you mean never again? I couldn't lie
to my friend and I wasn't about to freshen old ghosts. Well, don't answer him then, and
that's the end of it. I was a little relieved that she thought it could be gotten rid of so
quickly. I tore the note in half and gave her a part. Walking down the hill we minced the
paper in a thousand shreds and gave it to the wind.
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Having courage does not mean that we are unafraid. Having courage and showing courage
means we face our fears.
Maya Angelou
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Our Father, thank you for letting me see this New Day. Thank you that you didn't allow the
bed I lay on last night to be my cooling board, nor my blanket my winding sheet. Guide my
feet this day along the straight and narrow, and help me to put a bridle on my tongue. Bless
this house, and everybody in it. Thank you, in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, Amen.
Like most children, I thought if I could face the worst danger voluntarily, and triumph, I
would forever have power over it.
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The woman who truly intends to live a good life is already living phenomenally since intent
is part of the achievement.
Maya Angelou
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The saying that people who have nothing to do become busybodies is not the only truth.
Excitement is a drug, and people whose lives are filled with violence are always wondering
where the next fix is coming from.
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This a a wonderful day. I've never seen this one before.

Maya Angelou
tags: gratitude, wonder
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My education and that of my Black associates were quite different from the education of
our white schoolmates. In the classroom we all learned past participles, but in the streets
and in our homes the Blacks learned to drop ss from plurals and suffixes from past-tense
verbs. We were alert to the gap separating the written word from the colloquial. We learned
to slide out of one language and into another without being conscious of the effort. At
school, in a given situation, we might respond with Thats not unusual. But in the street,
meeting the same situation, we easily said, It bes like that sometimes.
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I can be changed by what happened to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it.

tags: motivational-quotes, self-healing-introspection
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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.
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We must re-create an attractive and caring attitude in our homes and in our worlds. If our
children are to approve of themselves, they must see that we approve of ourselves. If we
persist in self-disrespect and then ask our children to respect themselves, it is as if we break
all their bones and then insist that they win Olympic gold medals for the hundred-yard
dash.
Outrageous.
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The Black woman in the South who raises sons, grandsons and nephews had her
heartstrings tied to a hanging noose. Any break from routine may herald for them
unbearable news.
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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
tags: death, fear, good, living, meaning-of-life, responsibility, timidity
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The only way out of something is all the way through it.
Maya Angelou
tags: life
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Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, I
pray the Lord my soul to take.
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I wouldn't miss Mrs. Flowers, for she had given me her secret word which called forth a
djinn who was to serve me all my life: books.
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the true nature of the human heart is as whimsical as spring weather. All signals may aim
toward a fall of rain when suddenly the skies will clear.
Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou
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.
Maya Angelou
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I was liked, and what a difference it made.

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Weeper I hate to lose something, then she bent her head, even a dime, I wish I was
dead. I can't explain it. No more to be said. Cept I hate to lose something. I lost a doll once
and cried for a week. She could open her eyes, and do all but speak. I believe she was took,
by some doll-snatching sneak. I tell you, I hate to lose something. A watch of mine once,
got up and walked away. It had twelve numbers on it and for the time of day. I'll never
forget it and all I can say Is I really hate to lose something. Now if I felt that way bout a
watch and a toy, What you think I feel bout my lover-boy? I ain't threatening you, madam,
but he is my evening's joy. And I mean I really hate to lose something.
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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
and how you can still come out of it.
Maya Angelou
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The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself

Maya Angelou
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Be the best of anything you get into. If you want to be a whore, it's your life. Be a damn
good one. Don't chippy at anything. Anything worth having is worth working for.'
It was her version of Polonius' speech to Laertes. With that wisdom in my pouch, I was to
go out and buy my future.
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I believe most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be
otherwise. They shield themselves with an aura of unavailableness (for which after a time
they begin to take credit) largely as a defense tactic.
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There is a true yearning to respond to the singing river and wise rock.
Maya Angelou
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But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
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Intelligence always had a pornographic influence on me.

Maya Angelou
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Rev. King continued, chanting, singing his prophetic litany. We were one people,
indivisible in the sight of God, responsible to each other and for each other.
We, the black people, the most displaced, the poorest, the most maligned and scourged, we
had the glorious task of reclaiming the soul and saving the honor of the country. We, the
most hated, must take hate into our hands and by the miracle of love, turn loathing into
love. We, the most feared and apprehensive, must take fear and by love, change it into hope.
We, who die daily in large and small ways, must take the demon death and turn it into Life.
His head was thrown back and his words rolled out with the rumbling of thunder. We had
to pray without ceasing and work without tiring. We had to know evil will not forever stay
on the throne. That right, dashed to the ground, will rise, rise again and again.
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not only was cleanliness next to Godliness, dirtiness was the inventor of misery.
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Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them
with the shades of deeper meaning.
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Although I had no regrets, I told myself sadly that growing up was not the painless process
one would have thought it to be.
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Seek the fashion which truly fits and befits you. You will always be in fashion if you are
true to yourself, and only if you are true to yourself.
tags: inspirational, self-empowerment
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At fifteen, life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as
resistance, especially if one had no choice.
When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.
Maya Angelou
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Although nature has proven season in and season out that if the thing that is planted bears
at all, it will yield more of itself, there are those who seem certain that if they plant tomato
seeds, at harvesttime they can reap onions.
Too many times for comfort I have expected to reap good when I know I have sown evil. My
lame excuse is that I have not always known that actions can only reproduce themselves, or
rather, I have not always allowed myself to be aware of that knowledge. Now, after years of
observation and enough courage to admit what I have observed, I try to plant peace if I do
not want discord; to plant loyalty and honesty if I want to avoid betrayal and lies.
Of course, there is no absolute assurance that those things I plant will always fall upon
arable land and will take root and grow, nor can I know if another cultivator did not leave
contrary seeds before I arrived. I do know, however, that if I leave little to chance, if I am
careful about the kinds of seeds I plant, about their potency and nature, I can, within
reason, trust my expectations.
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There was a possibility that God really did love me, me Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to
cry at the gravity and grandeur of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do
wonderful things, I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything. For what could
stand against me, since one person, with God, constitutes the majority?
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Before he could bring his lips together, his teeth fell, no, actually his teeth jumped, out of
his mouth.
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If youre for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.

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Childhood's logic never asks to be proved (all conclusions are absolute).

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I swear to God, I rather you have a good mind than a cute behind.
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If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the
rust on the razor that threatens the throat.
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Later he explained that when a person is beating you you should scream as loud as
possible; maybe the whipper will become embarrassed or else some sympathetic soul might
come to your rescue.
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Being free is as difficult and as perpetual or rather fighting for ones freedom, struggling
towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good jew or a good
Moslem or a good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of
success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up in the next morning with the job still to be
done. So you start all over again.
Maya Angelou, Conversations with Maya Angelou
tags: freedom
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I really saw clearly, and for the first time, why a mother is really important. Not just
because she feeds and also loves and cuddles and even mollycoddles a child, but because in
an interesting and maybe an eerie and unworldly way, she stands in the gap. She stands
between the unknown and the known.
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.. !
Maya Angelou
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You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the
host. It doesnt do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger. You write it.
You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it.
Never stop talking it.
Maya Angelou
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Sugar cane reach up to God

And every baby crying
Shame the blanket of my night
And all my days are dying
tags: listlesness, poetry, shame
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The man who is a bigot,

is the worst thing God has got,
except his match, his woman,
who really is Ms. Begot.
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He was away in a mystery, locked in the enigma that young Southern Black boys start to
unravel, start to try to unravel, from seven years old to death. The humorless puzzle of
inequality and hate.
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I find it very difficult to let a friend or beloved go into that country of no return. I answer
the heroic question, "Death, where is thy sting?" with "It is here in my heart, and my mind,
and my memories.
tags: death
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I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.

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Hadn't I, always, but ever and ever, thought that life was just one great risk for the living?
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Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it.

Maya Angelou, Poems
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I think that everyone thought that the Depression like everything else, was for the whitefolks, so it had nothing to do with them.
Maya Angelou
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I've learned, I still have a lot to learn

Maya Angelou
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~We may encounter many defeats but we must NOT be defeated~

Maya Angelou
tags: boxing, competitions, defeats, dojos, fitness, gym, improvement, karate, life, martial-arts, mma, never-giveup, solutions-to-your-problems, sports, success, taekwondo, try-again, ufc
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Language is man's way of communicating with his fellow man and it is language alone
which separates him from the lower animals.
tags: language
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be a rainbow in someone else's cloude

Maya Angelou
tags: life-quotes
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Long after people forget what you said or did, they will remember how you made them
feel. Tim Sanders
Maya Angelou
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Girl, youre going to be all right. You havent forgotten the essentials. You know about
defending yourself. All you have to do now is remember sometimes you have to defend
yourself from yourself.
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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
tags: courage
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Believe people when they tell you who they are. They know themselves better than you.
Maya Angelou, A Song Flung Up to Heaven
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Because I was really white and because a cruel fairy stepmother, who was understandably
jealous of my beauty, had turned me into a too-big Negro girl, with nappy black hair, broad
feet and a space between her teeth that would hold a number-two pencil.
drinks on the closed-in porch. The exactness of her
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If someone shows you the first time who they are, believe them.
Maya Angelou
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Of course I could drive. Idiots and lunatics drove cars. Why not the brilliant Marguerite
Johnson?
tags: driving
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Still I rise"
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, Ill rise.
Cause I walk like Ive got oil wells
Still Ill rise.
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Dont you take it awful hard
Cause I laugh like Ive got gold mines
Diggin in my own backyard.

That I dance like Ive got diamonds
Out of the huts of historys shame
I rise
Up from a past thats rooted in pain
I rise
Im a black ocean, leaping and wide,
I rise
Into a daybreak thats wondrously clear
I rise
I rise
I rise
I rise.
Maya Angelou
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Excitement is a drug, and people whose lives are filled with violence are always wondering
where the next "fix" is coming from
Maya Angelou
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Modesty is a learned adaptation. Its stuck on like decals. As soon as life slams a modest
person against the wall, that modesty will fall off faster than a G-string will fall off a
stripper.
Maya Angelou
tags: modesty
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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.
Maya Angelou
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Turning off or tuning out people was my highly developed art. The custom of letting
obedient children be seen but not heard was so agreeable to me that I went one step
further: Obedient children should not see or hear if they chose not to do so. I laid a handful
of attention on my face and tuned up the sounds in the church.
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Phenomenal Woman
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms,
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
I walk into a room
And to a man,
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch

My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
The palm of my hand,
The need for my care.
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Maya Angelou
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Success is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it.
Maya Angelou
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San Franciscans would have sworn on the Golden Gate Bridge that racism was missing
from the heart of their air-conditioned city. But they would have been sadly mistaken. A
story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a
armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, Then ask your son to look around

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You can only become great at that thing you're willing to sacrifice for.
Maya Angelou
tags: greatness, life, sacrifice
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Still I Rise
Still I'll rise.

I rise
I rise
I rise
I rise
I rise
I rise
I rise.
Maya Angelou
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being aware. And the worst part of my awareness was that I didn't know what I was aware
of.
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Love life, engage in it, give it all youve got. Love it with a passion because life truly does
give back, many times over, what you put into it.
Maya Angelou
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.
tags:
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Try to be a rainbow in someones cloud

Maya Angelou, Soul Looks Back in Wonder
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We must recreate an attractive and caring attitude in our homes and in our worlds. If our
children are to approve of themselves, they must see that we approve of ourselves.
1 likes
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He watched her every move and when she left the room, his eyes allowed her reluctantly to
go.
tags: leave, leaving, love, love-quotes, watching, watching-her-go, watching-someone-leave
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Then came that terrible Christmas with its awful presents when our father, with the vanity
I was to find typical, sent his photograph. My gift from Mother was a tea seta teapot, four
cups and saucers and tiny spoons-and a doll with blue eyes and rosy cheeks and yellow hair
painted on her head. I didn't know what Bailey received, but after I opened my boxes I went
out to the backyard behind the chinaberry tree. The day was cold and the air as clear as
water. Frost was still on the bench but I sat down and cried. I looked up and Bailey was
coming from the outhouse, wiping his eyes. He had been crying too. I didn't know if he had
also told himself they were dead and had been rudely awakened to the truth or whether he
was just feeling lonely. The gifts opened the door to questions that neither of us wanted to
ask. Why did they send us away? and What did we do so wrong? So Wrong? Why at three
and four, did we have tags put on our arms to be sent by train alone from Long Beach,
California, to Stamps, Arkansas, with only the porter to look after us?
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Our Father, thank you for letting me see this New Day. Thank you that you didn't allow the
bed I lay on last night to be my cooling board, nor my blanket my winding sheet. Guide my
feet this day along the straight and narrow, and help me to put a bridle on my tongue. Bless
this house, and everybody in it. Thank
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I met that lovely Detroit lady and thought my time had come But just before I said I do I
said I got to run and started to Pickin em up and layin em down, Pickin em up and layin
em down, Pickin em up and layin em down, gettin to the next town Baby.
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.. , .. .
Maya Angelou
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Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it,
she stands up for all women
Maya Angelou
tags: women, women-s-inspirational, women-s-rights, women-s-strength
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.. .
Maya Angelou
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The woman who survives intact and happy must be at once tender and tough. She must
have convinced herself, that she, her values, and her choices are important. In a time and
world where males hold sway and control, the pressure upon women to yield their rights-ofway is tremendous. And it is under those very circumstances that the woman's toughness
must be in evidence.
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I may never be known as a philanthropist, but I certainly am a lover of mankind, and I will
give freely of my resources.
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I believe the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity, is daring to
dare.
Maya Angelou
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If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so prayerfully.
However, the wisest thing you can do is be present in the present... gratefully.
Maya Angelou
tags: mindfulness
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If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how truly amazing you are
Maya Angelou
I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start
by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they're stones that don't matter. As
long as you're breathing, it's never too late to do some good.
Maya Angelou
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It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and
there is strength. 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 their color;
equal in importance no matter their texture.
Maya Angelou, Rainbow in the Cloud: The Wisdom and Spirit of Maya Angelou
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The wise woman thinks twice and speaks once or, better yet, does not speak at all.
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I've had rainbows in my clouds.

Maya Angelou
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What is a fear of living? Its 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 dont know what
youre here to do, then just do some good.
Maya Angelou
tags: do-good, maya-angelou-quote
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that which causes the blood to flow orderly in our veins. This book has been written to
examine some of the ways love heals and helps a person to climb impossible heights and
rise from immeasurable depths.
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being aware.
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I decided I wouldn't pee on her if her heart was on fire.

Maya Angelou
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Prejudice is a burden which confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the
present inaccessible.
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Love. And again, see I don't mean, I think love is that condition in the human spirit so
profund, that it allows us to forgive, and it may be the energy which keeps the stars in the
firmament, I'm not sure. It may be the energy which keeps the blood running smoothly
through our veins. I'm not sure, but it's something beyond the explanation. It can be used
for anything you can explain. Any good thing you can explain.
Maya Angelou
tags: energy, forgivness, life, love, universe
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This is the role of the mother, and in that visit I really saw clearly, and for the first time,
why a mother is really important. Not just because she feeds and also loves and cuddles and
even mollycoddles a child, but because in an interesting and maybe an eerie and unworldly
way, she stands in the gap. She stands between the unknown and the known. In Stockholm,
my mother shed her protective love down around me and without knowing why people
sensed that I had value.
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It is imperative that a woman keep her sense of humor intact and at the ready. She must
see, even if only in secret, that she is the funniest, looniest woman in her world, which she
should also see as being the most absurd world of all times.
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The idea of overcoming is always fascinating to me, because few of us realize how much
energy we have expended just to be here today.
Maya Angelou
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If we lose love and respect for each other, this is how we finally die.
Maya Angelou
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When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
Maya Angelou
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Alone"
Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I dont believe Im wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
There are some millionaires
With money they cant use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
Theyve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Now if you listen closely
Ill tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
Cause nobody,
But nobody

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Maya Angelou
tags: loneliness
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If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be
Maya Angelou
tags: inspirational-quote
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Still I'll rise.

I rise
I rise
I rise
I rise
I rise
I rise
I rise.
Maya Angelou
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The love of the family, the love of one person, can heal. It heals the scars left by society. A
massive, powerful society.
Maya Angelou
tags: love
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My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion,
some compassion, some humor, and some style.
Maya Angelou
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I was always yours to have.

You were always mine.
We have loved each other in and out of time.
Maya Angelou
tags: love, poetry, time
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The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be
questioned.
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No one mentioned his(Bailey's) absence as if things were as they should be and always
were.
Maya Angelou
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The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.
Maya Angelou
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Continue to be bold, courageous. Try to chose the wisest thing and once youve chosen the
wisest thing go out and try to achieve it. Be it.
Maya Angelou
tags: courage
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As a species, we were an abomination. All of us.

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In and Out of Time

The sun has come.
The mist has gone.
We see in the distance...
our long way home.
When the first stone looked up at the blazing sun
and the first tree struggled up from the forest floor
I had always loved you more.
You freed your braids...
gave your hair to the breeze.
It hummed like a hive of honey bees.
I reached in the mass for the sweet honey comb there....
Mmmm...God how I love your hair.
The sun has come.

The mist has gone.
We see in the distance our long way home.
We have loved each other in and out
in and out
in and out
of time.
Maya Angelou
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I long, as does every other human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.
Maya Angelou
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The bright hours when the young rebelled against the descending sun had to give way to
twenty-four-hour periods called days that were named as well as numbered. The Black
female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same
time that 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 acceptance.
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All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us all that we
are more alike than we are unlike.
Independence is a heady draft, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect
on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It
is addictive and with each drink you want more.
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I have found that the platonic affection

in friendships and familial
love for children can be relied upon
with certainty to lift the bruised soul
and repair the wounded spirit
tags: love
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beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens.
Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier
to die and avoid conflicts than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of
maturity.
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always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.

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that which causes the blood to flow orderly in our veins.
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The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be
questioned. It impels mighty ambitions and dangerous capers. We amass great fortunes at
the cost of our souls, or risk our lives in drug dens from Londons Soho, to San Franciscos
Haight-Ashbury. We shout in Baptist churches, wear yarmulkes and wigs and argue even
the tiniest points in the Torah, or worship the sun and refuse to kill cows for the starving.
Hoping that by doing these things, home will find us acceptable or failing that, that we will
forget our awful yearning for it.
Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou
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Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in this world, but has not solved one yet.
Maya Angelou
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I thought at the time that it was noble to bear the ills one had silently. But not so silently
that others didn't know one was bearing them.
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Shadows on the wall Noises down the hall Life doesnt frighten me at all Bad dogs barking
loud Big ghosts in a cloud Life doesnt frighten me at all.
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Annie, everybody has a policy. In this world you have to have a policy. Now, my policy is I
don't treat colored people.
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Each 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
because each of us is more alike than we are unalike.
Maya Angelou
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...Lovers think quite different thoughts

while lying side by side.
tags: diversity, poem, the-human-family
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I am truly grateful: for being here, for being able to think, for being able to see, for being
able to taste, for appreciating lovefor knowing that it exists in a world so rife with
vulgarity, with brutality and violence And Im grateful to know it exists in me, and Im
able to share it with so many people.
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I try to plant peace if I do not want discord; to plant loyalty and honesty if I want to avoid
betrayal and lies.
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When someone shows you who they are believe them, the first time.
Maya Angelou
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And my seven-year-old world humpty-dumptied, never to be put back together again.

Maya Angelou
tags: childhood
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When People Show You Who They AreBelieve Them.

Maya Angelou
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You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.
Maya Angelou
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When people show you who they are believe them.

Maya Angelou
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When the main crowd of worshipers reached the short bridge spanning the pond, the
ragged sound of honky-tonk music assailed them. A barrelhouse blues was being shouted
over the stamping of feet on a wooden floor. Miss Grace, the good-time woman, had her
usual Saturday-night customers. The big white house blazed with lights and noise. The
people inside had forsaken their own distress for a little while. Passing near the din, the
godly people dropped their heads and conversation ceased. Reality began its tedious crawl
back into their reasoning. After all, they were needy and hungry and despised and
dispossessed, and sinners the world over were in the driver's seat. How long, merciful
Father? How long? A stranger to the music could not have made a distinction between the
songs sung a few minutes before and those being danced to in the gay house by the railroad
tracks. All asked the same questions. How long, oh God? How long?
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You must take the good that people do and put the bright light on that good, but human
beings can never withstand such light without showing their shadows and warts. All
mortals have their shortcomings and weaknesses.
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Without the presence and energy of art in our lives, we are capable of engaging in heartless
activities without remorse and cruelties with clear consciences.
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courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room
but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who
buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to
use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body
collective.
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When someone shows you who they are, you should believe them.
Maya Angelou
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Miss Glory went on to say that the doctor had taken all her lady organs. I reasoned that a
pig organ's included the lungs, heart, and liver, so if Mrs. Cullinan was walking around
without those essentials, it explained why she drank alcohol out of unmarked bottles. She
was keeping herself embalmed.
Maya Angelou
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When someone shows you who they are, the first time, believe them" Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou
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Their faces shone with the delight of their souls.

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Youre itching to be on your own. You dont want anybody telling you what time you have
to be in at night or how to raise your baby. Youre going to leave your mothers big
comfortable house and she wont stop you, because she knows you too well.
But listen to what she says:
When you walk out of my door, dont let anybody raise youyouve been raised.
You know right from wrong.
In every relationship you make, youll have to show readiness to adjust and make
adaptations.
Remember, you can always come home.
You will go home again when the world knocks you downor when you fall down in full
view of the world. But only for two or three weeks at a time. Your mother will pamper you
and feed you your favorite meal of red beans and rice. Youll make a practice of going home
so she can liberate you againone of the greatest gifts along with nurturing your courage,
that she will give you.
Be courageous, but not foolhardy.
Walk proud as you are.

Maya Angelou
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You cant use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
Maya Angelou
tags: creativity, have, more-than-you-know, use
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Even if they were society's pariahs, they were going to be angels in a marble white heaven
and sit on the right hand of Jesus, the Son of God.
I am Woman, Phenomenally, Phenomenal Woman, that's me.
Maya Angelou
tags: inspirational-quotes, international-women-s-day
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Good done anywhere is good done everywhere.

Maya Angelou
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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
tags: humanity
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The Black woman in the South who raises sons, grandsons and nephews had her
heartstrings tied to a hanging noose.
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A bird doesn't sing because it has a answer, it sings because it has a song.
Maya Angelou
tags: insperational-qoutes
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The city became for me the ideal of what I wanted to be as a grownup. Friendly but never
gushing, cool but not frigid or distant, distinguished without the awful stiffness.
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It is by observation that in the future they will not remember what you said, they will not
remember what you did, but they will remember how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou
tags: inspirational, leadership
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If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. ~Maya
Angelou
Maya Angelou
tags: inspirational
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I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.

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trembled. I wanted to throw a handful of black pepper in their faces, to throw lye on them,
to scream that they were dirty, scummy peckerwoods, but I knew I was as clearly
imprisoned behind the scene as the actors outside were confined to their roles.
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A story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a
armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, Then ask your son to look around
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You see, baby, you have to protect yourself. If you dont protect yourself, you look like a
fool asking somebody else to protect you. I thought about that for a second. She was right.
A woman needs to support herself before she asks anyone else to support her.
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When someone shows you

who they are,
believe them the first time.
Maya Angelou
tags: common-sense
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It was a large heart with lots of hearts growing smaller inside, and piercing from the
outside rim to the smallest heart was an arrow.
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Teachers of my
early youth
Taught forgiveness
stressed the truth
Here then is my
Christian lack:
If I'm struck then
I'll strike back.
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Maya Angelou
Ive learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it
will be better tomorrow. Ive learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way
he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree
lights
Maya Angelou
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I know for sure that love saves me. And that it is here to save us all. I know it's a sense, it's
more close to us than air, more loud to us than hearing. I know it. I know that we can sit in
it. Yes, love honey, and you know by that, I don't mean mush, or any, I don't mean romance,
or sentimentality. I mean something is so, it can raise the dead. It can make a mountain
move. I know it. I haven't done it, but i know it. As surely as I'm sitting here.
Maya Angelou
tags: inspirational, life, love
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The black mother perceives destruction at every door, ruination at each window, and even
she herself is not beyond her own suspicion.
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It seemed terribly unfair to have a toothache and a headache and have to bear at the same
time the heavy burden of Blackness.
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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.
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Life was cheap and death entirely free.

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more triumphant stories rainbowed around the

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Style is as unique and nontransferable and perfectly personal as a fingerprint. It is wise to

take the time to develop one's own way of being, increasing those things one does well and
eliminating the elements in one's character which can hinder and diminish the good
personality.
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The fog wasn't simply the steamy vapors off the bay caught and penned in by hills, but a
soft breath of anonymity that shrouded and cushioned the bashful traveler.
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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.
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reduced by them. Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a
change, change the way you have been thinking.
Maya Angelou
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Living well is an art which can be developed.

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Maya Angelou
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My mind struck a truth as an elbow can strike a table edge.

Maya Angelou
Some entertainers have tried to make art of coarseness, but in their public crudeness they
have merely revealed their own vast senses of personal inferiority. When they heap mud
upon themselves and allow their tongues to wag with vulgarity, they expose their belief that
they are not worth loving and in fact are unlovable. When we as an audience indulge then in
their profanity, we are like the audience at the Roman Colosseum being thrilled as the
raging lions kill the unarmed Christians. We not only participate in the humiliation of the
entertainers, but we are brought low by sharing in the obscenity. We need to have the
courage to say obesity is not funny and vulgarity is not amusing. Insolent children and
submissive parents are not the characters we want to admire and emulate. Flippancy and
sarcasm are not qualities which we need to include in our daily conversations.
Maya Angelou
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Although nature has proven season in and season out that if the thing that is planted bears
at all, it will yield more of itself, there are those who seem certain that if they plant tomato
seeds, at harvest time they can reap onions.
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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
tags: joy, love, love-of-reading, reading
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Ev'ry Voice and Singwords by James Weldon Johnson and music by J. Rosamond
Johnson. Copyright by Edward B. Marks Music Corporation. Used by permission.
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Dignity doesnt just mean always being stiff and composed. It means a belief in oneself,
that one is worthy of the best. Dignity means that what I have to say is important, and I will
say it when its important for me to say it. Dignity really means that I deserve the best
treatment I can receive. And that I have the responsibility to give the best treatment I can to
other people.
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Joy is an important element of happiness. It is sometimes the difference between striving

and thriving. One must nurture the joy in ones life so that it reaches full bloom.
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salt
Maya Angelou, Hallelujah! The Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories with
Recipes
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To make a difference is not a matter of accident, a matter of casual occurrence of the tides.
People choose to make a difference.
Maya Angelou
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The child gives, because the body can, and the mind of the violator cannot.
tags: healing-the-past, molestation, rape-of-a-child, rape-survivor, violate
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In the early months of World War II, San Francisco's Fill-more district, or the Western
Addition, experienced a visible revolution. On the surface it appeared to be totally peaceful
and almost a refutation of the term revolution. The Yakamoto Sea Food Market quietly
became Sammy's Shoe Shine Parlor and Smoke Shop. Yashigira's Hardware
metamorphosed into La Salon de Beaut owned by Miss Clorinda Jackson. The Japanese
shops which sold products to Nisei customers were taken over by enterprising Negro
businessmen, and in less than a year became permanent homes away from home for the
newly arrived Southern Blacks. Where the odors of tempura, raw fish and cha had
dominated, the aroma of chitlings, greens and ham hocks now prevailed. The Asian
population dwindled before my eyes. I was unable to tell the Japanese from the Chinese and
as yet found no real difference in the national origin of such sounds as Ching and Chan or
Moto and Kano. As the Japanese disappeared, soundlessly and without protest, the Negroes
entered with their loud jukeboxes, their just-released animosities and the relief of escape
from Southern bonds. The Japanese area became San Francisco's Harlem in a matter of
months. A person unaware of all the factors that make up oppression might have expected
sympathy or even support from the Negro newcomers for the dislodged Japanese.
Especially in view of the fact that they (the Blacks) had themselves undergone
concentration-camp living for centuries in slavery's plantations and later in sharecroppers'
cabins. But the sensations of common relationship were missing. The Black newcomer had
been recruited on the desiccated farm lands of Georgia and Mississippi by war-plant labor
scouts. The chance to live in two-or three-story apartment buildings (which became instant
slums), and to earn two-and even three-figured weekly checks, was blinding. For the first
time he could think of himself as a Boss, a Spender. He was able to pay other people to work
for him, i.e. the dry cleaners, taxi drivers, waitresses, etc. The shipyards and ammunition
plants brought to booming life by the war let him know that he was needed and even
appreciated. A completely alien yet very pleasant position for him to experience. Who could
expect this man to share his new and dizzying importance with concern for a race that he
had never known to exist? Another reason for his indifference to the Japanese removal was
more subtle but was more profoundly felt. The Japanese were not whitefolks. Their eyes,
language and customs belied the white skin and proved to their dark successors that since
they didn't have to be feared, neither did they have to be considered. All this was decided
unconsciously.
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Stand up straight and realize who you are, that you tower over your circumstances. You are
a child of God. Stand up straight.
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Take a day to heal from the lies youve told yourself and the ones that have been told to
you.
Maya Angelou
tags: healing, maya-angelou, quotes
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.

..
.
Maya Angelou
tags: i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings
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.. ,
.
Maya Angelou
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, .
Maya Angelou
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.
Maya Angelou
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removed from their own day of glorious release

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the
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.
Maya Angelou
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In a Time"
In a time of secret wooing
Today prepares tomorrows ruin
Left knows not what right is doing
My heart is torn asunder.
In a time of furtive sighs
Sweet hellos and sad goodbyes
Half-truths told and entire lies
My conscience echoes thunder
In a time when kingdoms come

Joy is brief as summers fun
Happiness, its race has run
Then pain stalks in to plunder.
Maya Angelou
tags: love
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. -
Maya Angelou
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.
Maya Angelou
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.
Maya Angelou
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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
tags: childhood, customs, learning, race
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courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast.
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and a few dainty nose blows into her handkerchief. In my room, I thought my father was
mean and cruel. He had enjoyed his Mexican holiday, and still was unable to proffer a bit of
kindness to the woman who had waited patiently, busying herself with housewifely duties. I
was certain that she knew he'd been drinking, and she must have noticed that although we
were away over twelve hours, we hadn't brought one tortilla into the house. I felt sorry and
even a little guilty. I had enjoyed myself, too. I had been eating chicharrones while she
probably sat praying for his safe return. I had defeated a car and a mountain as she
pondered over my father's fidelity. There was nothing fair or kind about the treatment, so I
decided to go out and console her. The idea of spreading mercy, indiscriminately, or, to be
more correct, spreading it on someone I really didn't care about, enraptured me. I was
basically good. Not understood, and not even liked, but even so, just, and better than just. I
was merciful. I stood in the center of the floor but Dolores never looked up. She worked the
thread through
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They basked in the righteousness of the poor and the exclusiveness of the downtrodden.
Let the whitefolks have their money and power and segregation and sarcasm and big houses
and schools and lawns like carpets, and books, and mostly--mostly--let them have their
whiteness. It was better to be meek and lowly, spat upon and abused for this little time than
to spend eternity frying in the fires of hell. No one would have admitted that the Christian
and charitable people were happy to think of their oppressors' turning forever on the Devil's
spit over the flames of fire and brimstone.
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Be a Rainbow in somebody elses cloud

Maya Angelou
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In my twenties in San Francisco I became a sophisticate and an acting agnostic. It wasn't

that I had stopped believing in God; it's just that God didn't seem to be around the
neighborhoods I frequented.
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It's another to the body, and it looks like Louis is going down.' My race groaned. It was our
people falling. It was another lynching, yet another Black man hanging on a tree. One more
woman ambushed and raped. A Black boy whipped and maimed. It was hounds on the trip
of a man running through slimy swamps. It was a white woman slapping her maid for being
forgetful.
No Loser, No Weeper I hate to lose something, then she bent her head, even a dime, I
wish I was dead. I can't explain it. No more to be said. Cept I hate to lose something. I lost
a doll once and cried for a week. She could open her eyes, and do all but speak. I believe she
was took, by some doll-snatching sneak. I tell you, I hate to lose something. A watch of
mine once, got up and walked away. It had twelve numbers on it and for the time of day. I'll
never forget it and all I can say Is I really hate to lose something. Now if I felt that way
bout a watch and a toy, What you think I feel bout my lover-boy? I ain't threatening you,
madam, but he is my evening's joy. And I mean I really hate to lose something.
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We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

Maya Angelou
tags: the-art-of-fiction-no-119
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That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than
college professors.
Maya Angelou
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You can't use up creativity. The more you use the more you have.
Maya Angelou
tags: creativity, hope, inspirational
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If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be
Maya Angelou
tags: inspirational, uplifting
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There is nothing more appalling than a constantly morose child.

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It's another to the body, and it looks like Louis is going down.' My race groaned. It was our
people falling. It was another lynching, yet another Black man hanging on a tree. One more
woman ambushed and raped. A Black boy whipped and maimed. It was hounds on the trip
of a man running through slimy swamps. It was a white woman slapping her maid for being
forgetful...This might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back in slavery and
beyond help. It would all be true, the accusations that we were lower types of human
beings. Only a little higher than the apes. True that we were stupid and ugly and lazy and
dirty and, unlucky and worst of all, that God Himself hated us and ordained us to be hewers
of wood and drawers of water, forever and ever, world without end. We didn't breathe. We
didn't hope. We waited.
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I had agreed with her that I should start collecting the Dial records featuring Bird, Max
Roach, Al Haig, Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie and others who she said were going to be the
masters. Each payday I kept out enough money to pay my own way at Mothers, and spent
the rest on records and books. Mother
Maya Angelou, Gather Together In My Name
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The people inside had forsaken their own distress for a little while. Passing near the din,
the godly people dropped their heads and conversation ceased. Reality began its tedious
crawl back into their reasoning. After all, they were needy and hungry and despised and
dispossessed, and sinners the world over were in the driver's seat. How long, merciful
Father? How long? A stranger to the music could not have made a distinction between the
songs sung a few minutes before and those being danced to in the gay house by the railroad
tracks. All asked the same questions. How long, oh God? How long?
Maya Angelou
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They were assured that they were going to be the only inhabitants of that milk and
honey...
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The minister's voice was a pendulum. Swinging for left and down and right and down and
left and-"How can you claim to be my brother, and hate me? Is that Charity? How can you
claim to be my sister and despise me? Is that supposed to be Charity? How can you claim to
be my friend and misuse and wrongfully abuse me? Is that Charity?...'now abideth faith,
hope and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
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Harlem Hopscotch
One foot down, then hop! It's hot.

Good things for the ones that's got.
Another jump, now to the left.
Everybody for hisself.
In the air, now both feet down.

Since you black, don't stick around.
Food is gone, the rent is due,
Curse and cry and then jump two.
All the people out of work,

Hold for three, then twist and jerk.
Cross the line, they count you out.
That's what hopping's all about.
Both feet flat, the game is done.

They think I lost. I think I won.
Maya Angelou
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God helps those who help themselves.

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I am capable of what every other human is capable of. This is one of the great lessons of
war and life.
Maya Angelou
tags: inspiration
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inhabitation
Maya Angelou, The Complete Poetry
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There is no greater agony than bearing an

untold story inside of you.
Maya Angelou
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You may trod me in the very dirt

Still I'll rise.
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Diggin' in my own backyard.
I rise
I rise
I rise
I rise
I rise
I rise
I rise.
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...I took out my first library card...I spent most of my Saturdays at the library (no
interruptions) breathing in the world of penniless shoeshine boys who, with goodness and
perseverance, became rich, rich men, and gave baskets of goodies to the poor on holidays.
The little princesses who were mistaken for maids, and the long-lost children mistaken for
waifs, became more real to me than our house, our mother, our school or Mr. Freeman
Maya Angelou
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For years, I had known that there is nothing idle about curiosity, despite the fact that the
two words are often used in tandem. Curiosity fidgets, is hard to satisfy, looks for answers
even before forming questions.
Maya Angelou, A Song Flung up to Heaven
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Remember if you decide for the Army, Ill support you. If you decide to be a whore, all I
can say is, be the best. Dont be a funky chippy. Go with class. She
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The best candy shop a child can be left alone in, is the library.
Maya Angelou
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Shine on me, sunshine Rain on me, rain Fall softly, dewdrops And cool my brow again.
Storm, blow me from here With your fiercest wind Let me float across the sky Til I can rest
again. Fall gently, snowflakes Cover me with white Cold icy kisses and Let me rest tonight.
Sun, rain, curving sky Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone Star shine, moon glow Youre all
that I can call my own.
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Never let white folks know what you really think. If youre sad, laugh. If youre bleeding
inside, dance.
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Ive 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.
Maya Angelou
tags: christmas-trees, lost-luggage, rainy-days, tangles
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The race of man is suffering And I can hear the moan, Cause nobody, But nobody Can
make it out here alone.
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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.
tags: heart
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Will I be less dead because I wrote this poem or you more because you read it long years
hence.
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never make someone a priority, when all you are is just a option.
Maya Angelou
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She was born poor and powerless in a land where power is money and money is adored.
Born black in a land where might is white and white is adored.
Born female in a land where decisions are masculine and masculinity controls.
tags: poetic-passage
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When people show you who they are, believe them.

Maya Angelou
I'll never know why it was important to him that the couple (he said it later that he'd never
seen them before) would take a picture of the whole Mr. Johnson back to Little Rock.
He must have been tired of being crippled, as prisoners tire of penitentiary bars and the
guilty tire of blame. The high topped shoes and the cane, his uncontrollable muscles and
thick tongue, and the looks he suffered of either contempt or pity had simply worn him out,
and for one afternoon, one part of an afternoon, he wanted no part of them.
I understood and felt closer to him at that moment than ever before or since.
Maya Angelou
tags: cripple, self-respect
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I am capable of what every other human is capable of. This is one of the great lessons of
war and life.
Maya Angelou
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Maya Angelou
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He explained when we were smaller that when things were very bad his soul just crawled
behind his heart and curled up and went to sleep.
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Some kind of love, Some Say

Is it true the ribs can tell the kick
Of a beast from a lover's fist?
The bruised bones record it well
The sudden shock, the hard impact
Then swollen lids
Sorry eyes spoke not of lost romance
But of hurt
Hate is often confused
Its limits are in zones beyond itself
And sadists will not learn that
Love, by nature, extracts a pain
Unequalled on the rack
Maya Angelou
tags: love
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The sun has come.

The mist has gone.
We see in the distance...
our long way home.
When the first stone looked up at the blazing sun
and the first tree struggled up from the forest floor
I had always loved you more.

You freed your braids...
gave your hair to the breeze.
It hummed like a hive of honey bees.
I reached in the mass for the sweet honey comb there....
Mmmm...God how I love your hair.
The sun has come.
The mist has gone.
We see in the distance our long way home.
We have loved each other in and out
in and out
in and out
of time.
Maya Angelou
tags: love, poetry
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If you know that youth is dying on the run and my daughter trades dope stories with your
son we'd better see what all our fearing and our jeering and our crying and our lying
brought about. Take Time Out.
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Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn't know before you learned it.
Maya Angelou
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Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option
Maya Angelou
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I found it hard to think of leaving my books. They had been my elevators out of the
midden, and to whom could I entrust such close friends? The
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But the Russian writers would be packed away in mothballs and stored in our basement. I
would savor the idea of Dostoevskys, Tolstoys and Gorkis volumes molding in the dank
cellar, wisps of camphor and odors of wet earth floating above them. I
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his
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The unsaid words pushed roughly against the thoughts that we had no craft to verbalize,
and crowded the room to uneasiness.
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When you learn, teach. When you get, give.

Maya Angelou
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You find the path by walking it.

Maya Angelou
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I should have known better than to lie to the government. People always said Uncle Sam
would spend a thousand dollars to get you if you stole a three-cent stamp from him. He was
more revengeful than God. I
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Self pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it
become uncomfortable
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Nothing will work, unless you do.

Maya Angelou
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We wear the mask that grins and lies.

It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes.
This debt we pay to human guile
With torn and bleeding hearts
We smile and mouth the myriad subtleties.
Why should the world think otherwise

In counting all our tears and sighs.
Nay let them only see us while
We wear the mask.
Maya Angelou
tags: humanity, tragedy
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Whether our new start was going to end in success or failure didn't cross my mind. What I
did know, and know consciously, was that it was already exciting.
Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou

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Maya Angelou > Quotes

Maya Angelou quotes (showing 1-30 of 620)

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

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

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.

how you can still come out of it.

Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!

You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.

Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.

I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh.

Out of the huts of history's shame

Be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud.

Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.

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

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

There were people who went to sleep last night,

What you're supposed to do

We need much less than we think we need.

Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.

I sustain myself with the love of family.

Be present in all things and thankful for all things.

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

When Great Trees Fall

When great souls die,

A Woman in harmony with her spirit

All great achievements require time.

Nothing will work unless you do.

We, unaccustomed to courage

old memories of pleasure

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

Its the fire in my eyes,

Success is loving life and daring to live it.

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

Did you want to see me broken?

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.

I've learned that I still have a lot to learn.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill,

No one can take the place of a friend, no one.

Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it.

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

To those who are given much, much is expected.

To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating

My life has been one great big joke,

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

Live as though life was created for you.

You may write me down in history

Ain't nothin' to it, but to do it.

As soon as healing takes place, go out and heal somebody else.

Ive got a magic charm

Don't let the man bring you down.

I hope that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.

If you're for the right thing, you do it without thinking.

To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating

We love and lose in China,

It's in the click of my heels,

We are all human; therefore, nothing human can be alien to us.

Just like moons and suns,

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are

tags: feminism, woman, women-s-rights

Here on the pulse of this new day

And say simply

I'm young as morning

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