Maya Angelou

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

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.

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

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

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. Love arrives and in its train come ecstasies old memories of pleasure ancient histories of pain. Yet if we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls. We are weaned from our timidity 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.

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

Those who would mend the world must first mend themselves.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.

In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.

To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.

It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part.

A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some area of native land where it may get the love of tender kinship from the earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge. The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one’s own homestead.

How much of human life is lost in waiting.

A country-bred man can always learn to get on with city people, but a town-bred fellah never gets the real hang of the country. You can put city polish on a man, but by golly, it seems you can’t ever rub it off him.

All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.

I see the whole concept of Generation X implies that everyone has lost hope.

The betrothed and accepted lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden by her acceptance. She was heaven while he pursued her, but she cannot be heaven if she stoops to one such as he!

We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.