Maya Angelou

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.

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.

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

We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life. Love arrives and in its train come ecstasies old memories of pleasure ancient histories of pain. Yet if we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls. We are weaned from our timidity In the flush of love’s light we dare be brave And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

The never-ending task of self improvement.

Life consists in what a person is thinking of all day.

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.

I don’t think it’s meant for man to know everything at once.

Cultivate kindness today and always.

Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

A wise neuter joins with neither, but uses both as his honest interest leads him.

Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual.

Silence is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it. There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence. The great Sufi poet Rumi wrote, Only let the moving waters calm down, and the sun and moon will be reflected on the surface of your being.

Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.

Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is victory.

Wear none of thine own Chains; but keep free, whilst thou art free.

The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.