Maya Angelou

Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

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

All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.

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.

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.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.

He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.

Go fish and hunt far and wide day by day – farther and wider – and rest thee by many brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played.

I was brought up to hate and fear liberty. I came to love it. That is the secret of my whole career.

If you injure your neighbour, better not do it by halves.

Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.

The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace.

There is no daily chore so trivial that it cannot be made important by skipping it two days running.

Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it.

The possibility of stepping into a higher plane is quite real for everyone. It requires no force or effort or sacrifice. It involves little more than changing our ideas about what is normal.

Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.

Every mind has a choice between truth and repose. Take which you please you can never have both.

Sincerity is the highest complement you can pay.