Maya Angelou Quotes

259 Sourced Quotes

Every experience shapes your writing, being stuck in a car on a lonely bridge, or dancing at a prom, being the it girl on the beach, all of those things influence your life, they influence how you write, and the topics you choose to write about.

Maya Angelou
Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.

Maya Angelou
Had I known that the heart breaks slowly, dismantling itself into unrecognizable plots of misery... had I known yet I would have loved you, your brash and insolent beauty, your heavy comedic face and knowledge of sweet delights, but from a distance I would have left you whole and wholly for the delectation of those who wanted more and cared less.

Maya Angelou
In a world so rife with vulgarity, with brutality and violence, love exists. I'm grateful to know that it exists.

Maya Angelou
I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. So at this wonderful, young age of 65, I don't know yet what the Lord has for me to do. I try to live up to the energy and to the calling, but I wouldn't dare say I have even scratched the surface yet.

Maya Angelou
Never, never let a person know you're frightened. And a group of them... absolutely never. Fear brings out the worst in everybody.

Maya Angelou
Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware. And the worst part of my awareness was that I didn't know what I was aware of. I knew I knew very little, but I was certain that the things I had yet to learn wouldn't be taught to me at George Washington High School.

Maya Angelou
There is a place in you that you must keep inviolate, a place that you must keep clean. A place where you say to any intruder, "Back up, don't you know I'm a child of God.

Maya Angelou
You may not get what you paid for, but you will pay for what you get.

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

Maya Angelou
On the day of your birth, the Creator filled countless storehouses, set aside for your use and yours alone.

Maya Angelou
If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

Maya Angelou
Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure... Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain flexible enough to notice and admit when what we expected to happen did not happen. We need to remember that we are created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.

Maya Angelou
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill, of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill, for the caged bird sings of freedom.

Maya Angelou
Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

Maya Angelou
Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.

Maya Angelou
We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

Maya Angelou
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.

Maya Angelou
And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.

Maya Angelou
Even here in America, we felt the cool, refreshing breeze of freedom when Nelson Mandela took the seat of Presidency in his country where formerly he was not even allowed to vote. We were enlarged by tears of pride as we saw Nelson Mandela's former prison guards invited, courteously, by him to watch from the front rows his inauguration.

Maya Angelou
But what mother and daughter understand each other, or even have the sympathy for each other's lack of understanding?

Maya Angelou
There is a kind of strength that is almost frightening in Black women. It's as if a steel rod runs right through the head down to the feet.

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

Maya Angelou
We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Maya Angelou
Mostly, what I have learned so far about aging, despite the creakiness of one's bones and cragginess of one's once-silken skin, is this: Do it. By all means, do it.

Maya Angelou