We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
I find relief from the questions only when I concede that I am not obliged to know everything. I remind myself it is sufficient to know what I know, and that what I know, may not always be true.
Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.
For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place...
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.
Remember this: When you cross my doorstep, you have already been raised. With what you have learned...you know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. Don't anybody raise you from the way yo...
Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.
There was a possibility that God really did love me, me Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the gravity and grandeur of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things, I co...
The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.
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 pr...
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 o...
Anything that works against you can also work for you once you understand the Principle of Reverse.
A friend may be waiting behind a stranger's face.
A free bird leaps on the back of the windand floats downstream till the current endsand dips his wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky.But a bird that stalks down his narrow cagecan...
At one time, you could sit on the Rue de la Paix in Paris or at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv or in Medina and you could see a person come in, black, white, it didn't matter. You said, 'That's an Ame...
Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.
We need much less than we think we need.
The devil lives in our mistakes, the lord lives in our rights. Who lives in our ignorance, and who wins after all?
As soon as healing takes place, go out and heal somebody else.
I speak to the Black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition--about what we can endure, dream, fail at and survive.