Learning Maya Angelou Quotes

The only way you can be a mark is if you want something for nothing. If you're greedy, you're set up. ~ Maya Angelou

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives. ~ Maya Angelou

there are times when no one is right, and sometimes among family and children, no one can admit that there is no right, and that maybe at the same time there is no wrong. But in this case I was wrong and I appreciate Vivian Baxter for being big enough to accept my apology. ~ Maya Angelou

Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet. ~ Maya Angelou

As Maya Angelou, American author, poet, and self-described Renaissance Woman, wrote, Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better. ~ L.R. Knost

I might have it at six-fifteen a.m. just as soon as I get in, but usually it's about eleven o'clock when I'll have a glass of sherry. ~ Maya Angelou

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. ~ Maya Angelou

When rain comes finally, washing away a low sky of muddy ocher, we who could not control the phenomenon are pressed into relief. The near-occult feeling: The face of being witness to the end of the world gives way to tangible things. Even if the succeeding sensations are not common, they are at least not mysterious. ~ Maya Angelou

You can see in others what they don't see in themselves and what the world doesn't see in them, ~ Maya Angelou

We need to remember that we are all created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed. ~ Maya Angelou

One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can't swim anymore and had the swimming pool covered over. Now it's what I call the dance pavilion, and so I and my friends sit out and put music on and watch people dance. ~ Maya Angelou

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 Mother's, and spent the rest on records and books. Mother ~ Maya Angelou

Life loves the person who dares to live it. ~ Maya Angelou

From Maya Angelou I began to believe that I, too, someday, could be a writer, and I also learned how tortuous it can be to be in possession of a unique voice. ~ Dirk Benedict

The man who is a bigot,
is the worst thing God has got,
except his match, his woman,
who really is Ms. Begot. ~ Maya Angelou

I hope you always find a reason to smile ~ Maya Angelou

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. ~ Maya Angelou

There is something more - the spirit, or the soul. I think that that quality encourages our courtesy and care and our minds. And mercy, and identity. ~ Maya Angelou

Don't kneel please. Sometimes people put people on pedestals so they can see them more clearly and knock them off more easily ~ Maya Angelou

Whether you are happy or whether you are sad, it is wise to remember you are really in process. ~ Maya Angelou

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

Anger is like fire. It burns all clean. ~ Maya Angelou

Had I not had my grandmother, who dared to be my rainbow in the clouds, I would have been just another sexually abused barefoot black girl on the roads of Arkansas. ~ Maya Angelou

One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping. ~ Maya Angelou

In a long meter hymn, a singer - they call it 'lays out a line.' And then the whole church joins in in repeating that line. And they form a wall of harmony so tight, you can't wedge a pin between it. ~ Maya Angelou

There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you. ~ Maya Angelou

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? ~ Maya Angelou

I could never put my finger on her realness. She was so pretty and so quick that even when she had just awakened, her eyes full of sleep and hair tousled, I thought she looked just like the Virgin Mary. But what mother and daughter understand each other, or even have the sympathy for each other's lack of understanding? Mother ~ Maya Angelou

Very few people grow up ~ Maya Angelou

We really are 15 countries, and it's remarkable that each of us thinks we represent the real America. The Midwesterner in Kansas, the black American in Durham - both are certain they are the real American. ~ Maya Angelou

The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes. ~ Maya Angelou

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. ~ Maya Angelou

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

I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh. ~ Maya Angelou

I suggest that the great art belongs to all people, all the time
that indeed it is made for the people, by the people, to the people. ~ Maya Angelou

If we are honest and fair, then we are known by that. If we are not, alas, we are known by that as well. What we want to do is do right, but you have to say it, you have to show it, and not stop. ~ Maya Angelou

We saw beyond our seeming
These days of bloodied screaming
Of children dying bloated
Out where the lilies floated
Of men all noosed and dangling
Within the temples strangling
Our guilt grey fungus growing
We knew and lied our knowing
Deafened and unwilling
We aided in the killing
And now our souls lie broken
Dry tablets without token. ~ Maya Angelou

Not only was cleanliness next to Godliness, dirtiness was the inventor of misery. ~ Maya Angelou

I thought, "why don't we be innovative and create something nobody had ever done before?" It was a huge hit and we immediately did a sequel with Chris Rock, Morgan Freeman, Tina Turner and Maya Angelou. ~ Henry Louis Gates

Their faces shone with the delight of their souls. ~ Maya Angelou

Joy is an important element of happiness. It is sometimes the difference between striving and thriving. One must nurture the joy in one's life so that it reaches full bloom. ~ Maya Angelou

I work very hard, and I play very hard. I'm grateful for life. And I live it - I believe life loves the liver of it. I live it. ~ Maya Angelou

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. ~ Maya Angelou

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