Quotes from Maya Angelou

One person, with good purpose, can, constitute the majority.

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.

You said to lean on your arm And I am leaning You said to trust in your love And I am trusting You said to call on your name And I am calling I'm stepping out on your word

This is the role of the mother. And in that visit I really saw clearly, for the first time, why a mother is really important. Not just because she feeds and also loves and also cuddles... but because in an interesting and and maybe an eerie and other worldly way, she stands in the gap. She stands between the unknown and the known.

Graduation, the hush-hush magic time of frills and gifts and congratulations and diplomas, was finished for me before my name was called. The accomplishment was nothing. The meticulous maps, drawn in three colors of ink, learning and spelling decasyllabic words, memorizing the whole of The Rape of Lucrece - it was for nothing. Donleavy had exposed us. We were maids and farmers, handymen and washerwomen, and anything higher that we aspired to was farcical and presumptuous.

I want you to learn that you cannot have anything without working for it. The only way you can be taken advantage of is if you think you can get something for nothing.

There was a possibility that God really did love me, me Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the gravity and grandeur of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things, I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything. For what could stand against me, since one person, with God, constitutes the majority?

Don't do anything that you think is wrong. Just do what you think is right, and then be ready to back it up even with your life.

Intelligence always had a pornographic influence on me.

Listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God.

Love is a condition so powerful; it may be that which pulls the stars in the firmament. It may be that which pushes and urges the blood in the veins. Courage: you have to have courage to love somebody because you risk everything — everything.

Be wary when a naked person offers you his shirt.