Maya Angelou

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

Education helps one case cease being intimidated by strange situations.

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.

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.

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.

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.

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

Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.

I often think that men don’t understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.

Surely life, if it be not long, is tedious, since we are forced to call in the assistance of so many trifles to rid us of our time, of that time which never can return.

Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.

The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods.

Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

Who’s not sat tense before his own heart’s curtain.

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.

When I feel like dancing, I dance. I don’t care if anyone else is dancing or if everyone else is laughing at me. I dance.

The ordinary man is an anarchist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbor to be governed, but he himself doesn’t want to be governed. He is mortally afraid of government officials and policemen.

The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.

In peace, as a wise man, he should make suitable preparation for war.