1,440 Quotes by maya angelou

Laughter so easily turns to hysteria for imaginative children.

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

In order to avoid this bitter end, we would all have to be born again, and born with the knowledge of alternatives. Even then?

What is a fear of living? It's being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself - for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don't know what you're here to do, then just do some good.

Words are things. You must be careful, careful about calling people out of their names, using racial pejoratives and sexual pejoratives and all that ignorance. Don’t do that. Some day we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things. They get on the walls. They get in your wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, and your clothes, and finally in to you.

You may kill me with your hatefulness, but like air I'll rise.

Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being unaware. And the worst part of my awareness was that I didn't know what I was aware of.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.