Maya Angelou Quotes

“When we find someone who is brave, fun, intelligent, and loving, we have to thank the universe.”

“The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.”

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

“If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me "I love you."”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“To those who have given up on love: I say, "Trust life a little bit.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.”

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

“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”

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

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

“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.”

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

“My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more intelligent and more educated than college professors.”

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”

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

“Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.”

“I am a Woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal Woman,
that's me.”

“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.”

“When someone shows you who they are believe them; the first time.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible…We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”

“Let nothing dim the light that shines from within”

“You don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.”

“I have need of a friend.

There is one and only one
who will give the air
from his failing lungs
for my body's mend.

And that one is my love.”

“Develop enough courage so that you can stand up for yourself and then stand up for somebody else.”

“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.")”

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

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

“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”

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

“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.”

“Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.”

“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.”

“You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.”

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

“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.”

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

“I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one.”

“We need much less than we think we need.”

“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.”

“Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.”