Maya Angelou Quotes

259 Sourced Quotes

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

Maya Angelou
I'm the same person I was back then,
A little less hair, a little less chin,
A lot less lungs and much less wind,
But ain't I lucky I can still breathe in.

Maya Angelou
We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.

Maya Angelou
Her large hips fluttered as if a bird, imprisoned in her pelvis was attempting flight.

Maya Angelou
My people had used music to soothe slavery's torment or to propitiate God, or to describe the sweetness of love and the distress of lovelessness, but I knew no race could sing and dance its way to freedom.

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

Maya Angelou
I think when we don't know what to do it's wise to do nothing. Sit down quietly; quiet our hearts and minds and breathe deeply.

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
My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.

Maya Angelou
I understand their meaning
it could and did derive
from living on the edge of death
They kept my race alive.

Maya Angelou
My wish for you
Is that you continue
To let gratitude be the pillow
Upon which you kneel to
Say your nightly prayer.

Maya Angelou
He was a simple man who had no inferiority complex about his lack of education, and even more amazing no superiority complex because he had succeeded despite that lack.

Maya Angelou
Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible, and live long lives.

Maya Angelou
I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me "I love you." … There is an African saying which is: "Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt."

Maya Angelou
My pride had been starched by a family who assumed unlimited authority in its own affairs.

Maya Angelou
Failure?
I'm not ashamed to tell it,
I never learned to spell it.
Not Failure.

Maya Angelou
Lift up your eyes
Upon this day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Here, on the pulse of this new day,
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
And into your brother's face,
Your country,
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

Maya Angelou
I am never proud to participate in violence, yet I know that each of us must care enough for ourselves that we can be ready and able to come to our own defence when and wherever needed.

Maya Angelou
Whites were as constant in our history as the seasons and as unfamiliar as affluence.

Maya Angelou
When we cast our bread upon the waters we can presume that someone downstream whose face we will never know will benefit from our action, as we who are downstream from another will profit from the grantor's gift.

Maya Angelou
You were a precious pearl
How I loved to see you shine,
You were the perfect girl.
And you were mine.
For a time.
For a time.
Just for a time.

Maya Angelou
The woman who survives intact and happy must be at once tender and tough.

Maya Angelou
The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

Maya Angelou
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size But when I start to tell them, They think I'm telling lies. I say, It's in the reach of my arms The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. I'm a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That's me.

Maya Angelou
I believe most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.

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

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
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
Oh, the holiness of being the injured party.

Maya Angelou
People will forget what you said
People will forget what you did
But people will never forget how you made them feel.

Maya Angelou