Maya Angelou

One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.

Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: “I’m with you kid. Let’s go.”

We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but religiously follows the new.

It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.

The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.

He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale.

Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

A man cannot free himself by any self-denying ordinances, neither by water nor potatoes, nor by violent possibilities, by refusing to swear, refusing to pay taxes, by going to jail, or by taking another man’s crops or squatting on his land. By none of these ways can he free himself; no, nor by paying his debts with money; only by obedience to his own genius.

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.

The rain comes and what bends will rise. It is a purposeful journey.