Maya Angelou famous quotes

Forgiveness. It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody. You are relieved of carrying that burden of resentment. You really are lighter. You feel lighter. You just drop that.
-- Maya Angelou

#Giving #Resentment #Burden

My son is the best thing that ever happened to me. And through me - to a lot of people.
-- Maya Angelou

#Son #People #My Son

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

#Inspirational #Life #Inspiring

There is a world of difference between facts and the truth. You can have so many facts that you don't deal with the truth. You never get to the truth. You have the places where, the people who, the times when, the reasons why, the methods how - blah blah. And never get to the human truth. The human truth is as elusive as the air. And as important as the air.
-- Maya Angelou

#Air #Differences #People

I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being.
-- Maya Angelou

#Life #Intelligent #Powerful Women

I think we ought to give ourselves more time. We should be more patient with ourselves and with each other.
-- Maya Angelou

#Thinking #Giving #Patient

I note the obvious differences between each sort and type, but we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.
-- Maya Angelou

#Differences #Notes #Type

There are those who say that poets should use her and his art to change the world. I'd agree with that, but I think everybody should do that. I think the chef and the baker and the candlestick maker - I think everybody should be hoping to make it a better world.
-- Maya Angelou

#Art #Thinking #Use

Our stories come from our lives and from the playwright's pen, the mind of the actor, the roles we create, the artistry of life itself and the quest for peace.
-- Maya Angelou

#Mind #Identity #Stories

Depending on who I am talking about or who's talking through me - if the person is a kind of hip-hop, or rhythm and blues person, or if the person is a kind of old-fashion gothic, meaning gothic attitude, then that will determine what form the poem will take.
-- Maya Angelou

#Fashion #Attitude #Who I Am

I'm grateful to be an American. I am grateful that we can be angry at the terrorist assault and at the same time be intelligent enough not to hold a grudge against every Arab and every Muslim.
-- Maya Angelou

#Grateful #Intelligent #Grudge

Happiness is a chance to talk to a friend, to hear good music, to have a good glass of wine. Happiness is a chance to be myself and to find people with whom I agree or who I don't agree but I can learn something.
-- Maya Angelou

#Wine #Glasses #People

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

#Inspirational #Motivational #Positive

We can be better, we can be wiser, we can be more kind. Yes we have to change. We have to grow up and stop acting like 10 years old. Yes there is much to do, much to see, much to go into.
-- Maya Angelou

#Growing Up #Years #Acting

I love living. I love that I'm alive to love my age. There are many people who went to bed just as I did yesterday evening and didn't wake this morning. I love and feel very blessed that I did. I love, too, that I know a little more today than I did yesterday, or I simply know it more profoundly.
-- Maya Angelou

#Morning #Blessed #Yesterday

Poetry and music are the best at the highest level of the human mind. Out of poetry, out of their need for poetry, human beings have developed the idea of God. And so when we sing, when we dance, when we speak poetry we are speaking out of God's mouth, each other out of the music from God's heart.
-- Maya Angelou

#Heart #Ideas #Mind

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

#Relax #Problem #Calmness

My hope is that we develop enough courage to develop courage. To try to have, try to learn to treat each other fairly, with generosity and kindness.
-- Maya Angelou

#Kindness #Generosity #Trying

Forgive yourself - no one else will.
-- Maya Angelou

#Forgiving #Forgive Yourself

I'm a writer and writers either have good memories or nothing at all.
-- Maya Angelou

#Memories #Good Memories

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
-- Maya Angelou

#Music #Loneliness #Space

I believe that people want the scent of love, more than anything else. And I don't mean sentimentality, I don't mean mush. I mean that idea, that human beings are more alike than we are different. And that means that I can love you. I don't mean support you in bad things you do, that I can understand because you're a human being.
-- Maya Angelou

#Believe #Love You #Mean

Prepare yourself so that you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud.
-- Maya Angelou

#Clouds #Rainbow

When the storyteller tells the truth, she reminds us that human beings are more alike than unalike... A story is what it's like to be a human being-to be knocked down and to miraculously arise. Each one of us has arisen, awakened. We do rise.
-- Maya Angelou

#Writing #Stories #Down And

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.
-- Maya Angelou

#Inspirational #Strength #Inspiring

I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one. 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. I've learned that I still have a lot to learn.
-- Maya Angelou

#Pain #Heart #People

I believe everything is energy. I believe that the meal you serve yourself, you prepare, is energy. And if you serve it to your family, it's your gift of energy to them.
-- Maya Angelou

#Believe #Meals #Energy

Nothing will work unless you do.
-- Maya Angelou

#Inspirational #Motivational #Moving On

I like to go back and read poems that I wrote fifty years ago, twenty years ago, and sometimes they surprise me - I didn't know I knew that then. Or maybe I didn't know it then, and I know more now.
-- Maya Angelou

#Years #Fifty #Twenties

If you have done the best you can do and if you have gotten all you could extract from something, you have given all you had to give, then the time has come when you can do no more than say thank you and move on.
-- Maya Angelou

#Moving #Giving #Done

I think all poems are commissioned. They just come to me without somebody outside commissioning them. The idea comes and I will live with them 'til I get it as close to what I mean. I've never been totally satisfied. I've come close a few times.
-- Maya Angelou

#Mean #Thinking #Ideas

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

#Inspirational #Life #Encouragement

The subject of the poem usually dictates the rhythm or the rhyme and its form. Sometimes, when you finish the poem and you think the poem is finished, the poem says, "You're not finished with me yet," and you have to go back and revise, and you may have another poem altogether. It has its own life to live.
-- Maya Angelou

#Thinking #May #Sometimes

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

#Inspirational #Motivational #Change

I think the more we know the better we are. I mean not just facts. The more we know about each other, the closer we are to learn something about our selves.
-- Maya Angelou

#Mean #Thinking #Self

I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine ... before she realizes she's reading.
-- Maya Angelou

#Book #Reading #Writing

If we live long enough, we may even get over war. I imagine a time when somebody will mention the word war and everyone in the room will start to laugh. And what do you mean war?
-- Maya Angelou

#War #Mean #Laughing

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.
-- Maya Angelou

#Inspirational #Relationship #Inspiring

I have no modesty. Modesty is a learned affectation. It's like decal stuck up on a person.
-- Maya Angelou

#Modesty #Stuck Up #Stuck

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

#Life #Dance #Upset

When teachers or people in authority put me down or in one way or another tried to make me feel less than equal to what they thought I should be - my mother was on my side. It was amazing.
-- Maya Angelou

#Mother #Teacher #People

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

#Motivational #Change #Path

I could fall in love with a sumo wrestler if he told stories and made me laugh. Obviously, it would be easier if someone was African-American and lived next door and went to the same church. Because then I wouldn't have to translate.
-- Maya Angelou

#Falling In Love #Doors #Laughing

All great achievements require time.
-- Maya Angelou

#Success #Encouraging #Perseverance

I believed that there was a God because I was told it by my grandmother and later by other adults. But when I found that I knew not only that there was God but that I was a child of God, when I understood that, when I comprehended that, more than that, when I internalized that, ingested that, I became courageous.
-- Maya Angelou

#Children #Grandmother #Adults

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

#Inspirational #Motivational #Change

You don't need another person, place or thing to make you whole. God already did that. Your job is to know it.
-- Maya Angelou

#Jobs #Needs #Persons

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

#Love #Life #Good Morning

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
-- Maya Angelou

#Inspirational #Relationship #Inspiring

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

#Inspirational #Motivational #Happiness

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

#Travel #Home #Positivity

When you know better you do better.
-- Maya Angelou

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

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

#Inspiring #Success #Encouragement

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

#Inspirational #Song #Nature

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.
-- Maya Angelou

#Inspirational #Positive #Inspiring

It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.
-- Maya Angelou

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Powerful

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

#Love #Life #Passion

If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?
-- Maya Angelou

#Inspirational #Life #Life Changing

To those who have given up on love: I say, "Trust life a little bit.
-- Maya Angelou

#I Hate You #Littles #Aging

It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of us has it. That is the truth of it.
-- Maya Angelou

#Struggle #Air #Play

You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.
-- Maya Angelou

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Moving On

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

#Inspirational #Positive #Happiness

Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it's right, it's easy. It's the other way round, too. If it's slovenly written, then it's hard to read. It doesn't give the reader what the careful writer can give the reader.
-- Maya Angelou

#Reading #Writing #Giving

Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.
-- Maya Angelou

#Success #Cancer #Positivity

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

#Role Models #Cheerful #Roles

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

#Happiness #Laughter #Blessing

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise. Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear, I rise.
-- Maya Angelou

#Night #Leaving #Terror

The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.
-- Maya Angelou

#Inspirational #Family #Powerful

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them.
-- Maya Angelou

#Protect

On Saturday afternoons when all the things are done in the house and there's no real work to be done, I play Bach and Chopin and turn it up real loudly and get a good bottle of chardonnay and sit out on my deck and look out at the garden.
-- Maya Angelou

#Real #Garden #Play

I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I'm praying, but also something wonderful happens to me. I'm grateful that I'm heard.
-- Maya Angelou

#Grateful #Praying #Wonderful

Shakespeare must be a black girl.
-- Maya Angelou

#Girl #Black #Black Girl

You build your 'COURAGE MUSCLE' daily, by being courageous in little things. Just do right..
-- Maya Angelou

#Littles #Courageous #Little Things

You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it's all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.
-- Maya Angelou

#Inspirational #Positive #Inspiring

When I write, I tend to twist my hair. Something for my small mind to do, I guess.
-- Maya Angelou

#Writing #Hair #Mind

I'm just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.
-- Maya Angelou

#Expression #Cooking #Likes

In all my work, I try to say - 'You may be given a load of sour lemons, why not try to make a dozen lemon meringue pies?'
-- Maya Angelou

#Pie #Trying #Dozen

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

#Inspiring #Believe #Love Life

I think that that's the wisest thing - to prevent illness before we try to cure something.
-- Maya Angelou

#Thinking #Trying #Illness

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels.
-- Maya Angelou

#Girl #Teenage #World

Give yourself time just to be with yourself.
-- Maya Angelou

#Giving

We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.
-- Maya Angelou

#Inspirational #Humans

The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.
-- Maya Angelou

#Truth Is

In a magazine, one can get - from cover to cover - 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it.
-- Maya Angelou

#Ideas #Different #Magazines

Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.
-- Maya Angelou

#Book #Native American #Black History

I am a Woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal Woman, that's me.
-- Maya Angelou

#Inspirational #Motivational #Inspiring

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

#Inspiring #Courage #Believe

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

#Inspirational #Life #Inspiring

Food served is always more than just food served. That is to say, it is more than just fuel for the body. Depending upon who has prepared the food and who has served it and with what spirit, it can uplift the--and around the world, in every culture, food is used to flirt, to be coy, a raise in the employment or to search for employment. It can bring warring factions together.
-- Maya Angelou

#Uplifting #Flirting #Together

You have to have courage to love somebody. Because you risk everything. Everything.
-- Maya Angelou

#Risk #Courage To Love #Have Courage

Independence is a heady draught, 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.
-- Maya Angelou

#4th Of July #Wine #Independence

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

#Cute #Fashion #Women

I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life.
-- Maya Angelou

#Inspirational #Parent #Missing

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay - and rise!
-- Maya Angelou

#Inspirational #Light #Mirrors

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

#Aliens #Humans

I think a number of the leaders are, whether you like it or not, in the hip-hop generation. And when they understand enough, they'll do wonders. I count on them.
-- Maya Angelou

#Thinking #Numbers #Hip Hop

Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art.
-- Maya Angelou

#Life #Inspiring #Art

Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.
-- Maya Angelou

#Loving Someone #Age #Lovers

I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one.
-- Maya Angelou

#Pain #Positive Thinking

The most important thing I can tell you about aging is this: If you really feel that you want to have an off-the-shoulder blouse and some big beads and thong sandals and a dirndl skirt and a magnolia in your hair, do it. Even if you're wrinkled.
-- Maya Angelou

#Hair #Important #Want