Maya Angelou

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.

I encourage you to live with life. Be courageous, adventurous. Give us a tomorrow, more than we deserve.

A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

Be present in all things and thankful for all things.

Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaken need for an unshakable God.

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.

This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

Work is life, you know, and without it, there’s nothing but fear and insecurity.

Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.

Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.

You see things; and you say Why? But I dream things that never were; and I say Why not?

All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

Prejudice not being funded on reason cannot be removed by argument.

Resting at your shore fills me with a peace, as if I’ve always been here. My cells resonating with the element of you, boundaries diffuse as one.

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.

Many heroes lived before Agamemnon; but all are unknown and unwept, extinguished in everlasting night, because they have no spirited chronicler.

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run. Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.