Maya Angelou

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

I’ve learned that making a ‘living’ is not the same thing as ‘making a life’.

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.

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

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.

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

Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman – repose in energy.

True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism.

A shoe that is too large is apt to trip one, and when too small, to pinch the feet. So it is with those whose fortune does not suit them.

Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.

Make a good use of the present.

Today is Trinity Sunday. Centuries ago words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice: Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valor, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. As the Will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be.

If anyone were to ask me what I want out of life I would say- the opportunity for doing something useful, for in no other way, I am convinced, can true happiness be attained.

A good conscience is a continual feast.

If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively.

You bring out the be(a)st in me. Polarized tension, a raw slash of claw, swathed softly in love. A peace of my mind in tumultuous chaotic razor-sharp clarity, impulsive wit to wisdom, mixing addictive shots of cocktail emotions in a full-spectrum experience.

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.

Stay at home in your mind. Don’t recite other people’s opinions. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?

If someone betrays you once, it’s their fault; if they betray you twice, it’s your fault.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.