Miah Angelou Quotes

What I think it really means is: I'm a teacher. I am a teacher. I teach all the time, as you do and as all of you do-whether we know it or not, whether we take responsibility for it or not. I hold nothing back because I want to see that light go off. I like to see the children say, 'I never thought of that before.' And I think, 'I've got them!' ~ Maya Angelou

be a rainbow in someone else's cloude ~ Maya Angelou

Is it true the ribs can tell The kick of a beast from a Lover's fist? ~ Maya Angelou

I'm a feminist. I've been a female for a long time now. It'd be stupid not to be on my own side. ~ Maya Angelou

Still I'll rise. ~ Maya Angelou

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

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. ~ Maya Angelou

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

I've learned that forgiving is one of the greatest gifts that I can give myself. ~ Maya Angelou

My mother's gifts of courage to me were both large and small. The latter are woven so subtly into the fabric of my psyche that I can hardly distinguish where she stops and I begin. ~ Maya Angelou

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

I would ask every man and every woman who's had the blessing of having children, 'Would you deny your son or your daughter the ecstasy of finding someone to love?' To love someone takes a lot of courage. So how much more is one challenged when the love is of the same sex and the laws say, 'I forbid you from loving this person'? ~ Maya Angelou

While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated. ~ Maya Angelou

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. ~ Maya Angelou

Try to be all you can be to be the best human being you can be. Try to be that in your church, in your temple. Try to be that in your classroom. Do it because it is right to do. ~ Maya Angelou

When we decide to be happy we accept the responsibility to bring happiness to someone else. ~ Maya Angelou

Have enough courage to love. ~ Maya Angelou

It is better to control oneself, if one can, and not hit back. But on certain occasions, it is imperative to defend oneself. I don't think it's fair to ask anybody not to defend herself or himself. ~ Maya Angelou

I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is. ~ Maya Angelou

What we really have to do is take a day and sit down and think. The world is not going to end or fall apart. Jobs won't be lost. Kids will not run crazy in one day. Lovers won't stop speaking to you. Husbands and wives are not going to disappear. Just take that one day and think. Don't read. Don't write. No television, no radio, no distractions. Sit down and think ... Go sit in a church, or in the park, or take a long walk and think. Call it a healing day. ~ Maya Angelou

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

The dread of futility has been my life-long plague. ~ Maya Angelou

I think I have had so much blessing - I've had my brother, who was brilliant - I think my family came closest to making a genius when they made my brother - Bailey was just all of that. He loved me. ~ Maya Angelou

When I think about myself, I almost laugh myself to death, 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. Sixty ~ Maya Angelou

we had been each other's home and center for seventeen years. He could die if he wanted to and go off to wherever dead folks go, but I, I would be left without a home. ~ Maya Angelou

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. ~ Maya Angelou

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. ~ Maya Angelou

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

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

We will sometimes have defeats in life but you can have defeats without being defeated, you could fail without being a failure. When you see failure and defeats as merely part of the process to get to when. ~ Maya Angelou

I, with millions of other Americans, have the same dream Martin Luther King Jr. had; when I wake up I wish some of the things I dreamt would be true. I wish that little black and white boys and girls would hold hands without being shocked at their nearness to each other and say in a natural way, we have overcome. ~ Maya Angelou

The child gives, because the body can, and the mind of the violator cannot. ~ Maya Angelou

Some critics will write 'Maya Angelou is a natural writer' - which is right after being a natural heart surgeon. ~ Maya Angelou

I discovered that to achieve perfect personal silence all I had to do was to attach myself leechlike to sound. I began to listen to everything. I probably hoped that after I had heard all the sounds, really heard them and packed them down, deep in my ears, the world would be quiet around me. ~ Maya Angelou

Nothing's wrong with going to jail for something you believe in. Remember, jail was made for people. Not horses. ~ Maya Angelou

It's very hard for adults to maintain respect and romance so that a love affair can be sustained over years. ~ Maya Angelou

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

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 London's Soho, to San Francisco's 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

I know that I've been guided by God. I am obedient. ~ Maya Angelou

Everything costs and costs the earth. ~ Maya Angelou

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

Open your eyes to the beauty around you, open your mind to the wonders of life, open your heart to those who love you, and always be true to yourself. ~ Maya Angelou

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

I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right. ~ Maya Angelou

You don't have to tell everything you know, but let what you do say be the truth as you understand it. ~ Maya Angelou

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. ~ Maya Angelou

I've read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of 'You Can't Go Home Again' and 'Look Homeward, Angel.' ~ Maya Angelou