Maya Angelou

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

I answer the heroic question Death where is thy sting? It is here in my heart and mind and memories

Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.

If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.

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

Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

Esther liked books out where everyone could see them, a sort of graphic index to the intricate labyrinth of her mind arrayed to impress the most casual guest, a system of immediate introduction which she had found to obtain in a number of grimy intellectual households in Greenwich Village.

Intellectual work is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other.

Usually the modest person passes for someone reserved, the silent for a sullen person

Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.

Any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose.

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.

Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.

Some men do as much begrudge others a good name, as they want one themselves: and perhaps that is the reason of it.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

This ain’t fun. But you watch me, I’ll get it done.

Every time I think I have reached the peak, I look up and see I still have a ways to go. But I look back and see just how far I have come.