Maya Angelou

Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence – neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish – it is an imponderably valuable gift.

I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life.

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.

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

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

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.

Birth and death are so closely related that one could not destroy either without destroying the other at the same time. It is extinction that makes creation possible.

If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes.

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

The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

We are reformers in the spring and summer, but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning, and conservers at night.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

The country life is to be preferred, for there we see the works of God; but in cities little else but the works of men. And the one makes a better subject for contemplation than the other.

Zeal ever follows an appearance of truth, and the assured are too apt to be warm; but it is their weak side in argument; zeal being better shown against sin than persons, or their mistakes.

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles with it.

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

We are just statistics, born to consume resources.

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.

The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars.