Maya Angelou

Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.

Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.

I answer the heroic question Death where is thy sting? It is here in my heart and mind and memories

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!

It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

Gazing to the south, from the eastern peak, the moon appears through the raindrops.

Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man’s breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea, to discover a great thought – an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of a field that many a brain-plough had gone over before. To find a new planet, to invent a new hinge, to find a way to make the lightning carry your messages. To be the first – that is the idea.

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

Out of love and hatred, out of earnings and borrowings and leadings and losses; out of sickness and pain; out of wooing and worshipping; out of traveling and voting and watching and caring; out of disgrace and contempt, comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws.

The foolish are like ripples on water, For whatsoever they do is quickly effaced; But the righteous are like carvings upon stone, For their smallest act is durable.

I constantly ask myself if what I’m doing is for me or somebody else. It’s tripping me out!

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.