Quotes from Maya Angelou

I find it very difficult to let a friend or beloved go into that country of no return. I answer the heroic question, Death, where is thy sting? with It is here in my heart, and my mind, and my memories.

not only was cleanliness next to Godliness, dirtiness was the inventor of misery.

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.

People may not remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel

Being free is as difficult and as perpetual — or rather fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good jew or a good Moslem or a good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up in the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

That child would stumble over the pattern in a rug.

See you don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the right thing you do it without thinking.

People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel. ~ From intro to movie: Spinning Into Butter

Never let white folks know what you really think. If you're sad, laugh. If you're bleeding inside, dance.

Weekdays revolved on a sameness wheel. They turned into themselves so steadily and inevitably that each seemed to be the original of yesterday's rough draft. Saturday, however, always broke the mold and dared to be different.

You do your best until you know better, then you do better.

She used to say that her secret to life was that she "hoped for the best, was prepared for the worst, so anything in between didn't come as a surprise.