Maya Angelou

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.

I am a Woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal Woman, that’s me.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.

Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.

Upon retiring, sleep as if you had entered your last sleep. Upon awakening, leave your bed behind you instantly as if you had cast away a pair of old shoes.

The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.

Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven.

Nothing astonishes people so much as common sense and plain dealing.

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined – to strengthen each other – to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.

All the great ages have been ages of belief.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!

What we become depends on what our fathers teach us.

Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.

Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance.

Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all.

It is a happy talent to know how to play.