Maya Angelou

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare.

The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder – in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.

The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.

The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.

The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot, with your best deliberation and heed, come so close to any question as your spontaneous glance shall bring you.

Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life.

As long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.

How we glow over these novels of passion, when the story is told with any spark of truth and nature! And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover.

In the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am – unbound.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.

Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.

Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg by the side of which more will be laid.

I do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive.

Today is the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be again.

The best armor is to keep out of gunshot.