Maya Angelou Quotes - Page 3

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

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

Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.

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.

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

Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.

No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

To those who are given much, much is expected.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

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

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

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

Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence - neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish - it is an imponderably valuable gift.

Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

When things were very bad his soul just crawled behind his heart and curled up and went to sleep