Maya Angelou

I believe that every person is born with talent.

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.

I am a Woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal Woman, that’s me.

I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God’s will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.

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.

Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaken need for an unshakable God.

There is a difference between being convinced and being stubborn.

There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep.

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

O imitators, you slavish herd!

Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.

More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten his enemy at a disadvantage stop to pray before cutting his throat.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

As to the adjective, when in doubt strike it out.

To be innocent is to be not guilty; but to be virtuous is to overcome our evil inclinations.

We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.

There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me-I always feel that they have not said enough.

Good sense is both the first principal and the parent source of good writing.