Maya Angelou Life Quotations

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

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

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning 'Good morning' at total strangers.

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

I thank God I'm myself and for the life I'm given to live and for friends and lovers and beloveds, and I thank God for knowing that all those people have already paid for me.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

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

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

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

At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

If you want what you're saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody's life. Your own, first.

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that's walked a song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, 'No. No, I'm finished. Bye.' And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won't do that.

I was born in St. Louis but lived there just for a few minutes in my life.

love life, engage in it, give it all you've got. love it with a passion, because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it

My life has been one great big joke, A dance that's walked, A song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke, When I think about myself.

At one time in my life, from the time I was seven until I was about 13, I didn't speak. I only spoke to my brother. The reason I didn't speak: I had been molested, and I told the name of the molester to my brother who told it to the family.

When members of a society wish to secure that society's rich heritage they cherish their arts and respect their artists. The esteem with which we regard the multiple cultures offered in our country enhances our possibilities for healthy survival and continued social development.

I am convinced that most people do not grow up...We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias.

I'm grateful to intelligent people. That doesn't mean educated. That doesn't mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call 'mother wit' means intelligence that you had in your mother's womb. That's what you rely on. You know what's right to do.

The intensity with which young people live demands that they "blank out" as often as possible.

He was a simple man who had no inferiority complex about his lack of education, and even more amazing no superiority complex because he had succeeded despite that lack.

Faith is the evidence of the unseen.

Love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free. A Brave and Startling Truth.

The devil lives in our mistakes, the lord lives in our rights. Who lives in our ignorance, and who wins after all?

Be wary when a naked person offers you his shirt

The dread of futility has been my life-long plague.

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 unshaking need for an unshakable God. My pretty Black brother was my Kingdom Come.

Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself confessed to the same crime short years before). The command to grow up at once was more bearable than the faceless horror of wavering purpose, which was youth.

I couldn't tell fact from fiction, Or if the dream was true My only sure prediction In this world was you. I'd touch your features inchly. Beard love and dared the cost, The sented spiel reeled me unreal And I found my senses lost.

The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body collective.

I had read a Tale of Two Cities and found it up to my standards as a romantic novel. She opened the first page and I heard poetry for the first time in my life...her voice slid in and curved down trough and over the words. She was nearly singing.

On the day of your birth, the Creator filled countless storehouses, set aside for your use and yours alone.

What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain.

Light and shadow are opposite sides of the same coin. We can illuminate our paths or darken our way. It is a matter of choice.

Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.

Hope for the best, be prepared for the worse. Life is shocking, but you must never appear to be shocked. For no matter how bad it is it could be worse and no matter how good it is it could be better.

You can only become great at something you are willing to sacrifice for

All knowledge is spendable currency, depending on the market.

To grow up is to stop putting blame on parents

I make writing as much a part of my life as I do eating or listening to music.

You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise!

Success is loving life and daring to live it.

Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art.

Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.

Be present in all things and thankful for all things.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible, and live long lives.

The question is not how to survive, but how to thrive with passion, compassion, humor and style.

The happy heart runs with the river, floats on the air, lifts to the music, soars with the eagle, hopes with the prayer.

I believe talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it. You can plug into it and light up a lamp, keep a heart pump going, light a cathedral, or you can electrocute a person with it. Electricity will do all that. It makes no judgment. I think talent is like that. I believe every person is born with talent.

If we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.

Life loves the person who dares to live it.

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 commensurate speed.

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

When you know better you do better.

If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?

We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.

I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

We are only as blind as we want to be.

The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.

Life loves the liver of it.

Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure. . . Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain flexible enough to notice and admit when what we expected to happen did not happen. We need to remember that we are created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.

No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.

Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs?

Love life. Engage in it. Give it all you've got. Love it with a passion because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it.

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.

I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being.

You will face many defeats in your life, but never let yourself be defeated.

When you learn, teach, when you get, give.

I’m grateful for being here, for being able to think, for being able to see, for being able to taste, for appreciating love – for knowing that it exists in a world so rife with vulgarity, with brutality and violence, and yet love exists. I’m grateful to know that it exists.