Maya Angelou Quotes
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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.
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How wonderful it is to be an American. We have known the best of times and the worst of times.
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I've conducted the Boston Pops! Imagine that! Me! Maya Angelou! I've sang and danced at La Scala!
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Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.
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I think I have had so much blessing - I've had my brother, who was brilliant - I think my family came closest to making a genius when they made my brother - Bailey was just all of that. He loved me.
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You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I'll rise.
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I'm very, very serious - I'm serious enough not to take myself too seriously. That means I can be completely wedded to the moment. But when I leave that moment, I want to be completely wedded to the next moment.
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I have a feeling that I make a very good friend, and I'm a good mother, and a good sister, and a good citizen. I am involved in life itself - all of it. And I have a lot of energy and a lot of nerve.
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My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.
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Petulant priests, greedy centurions, and one million incensed gestures stand between your love and me.
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I became the kind of parent my mother was to me.
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Don't get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that - if you dare. But get older because it's fun!
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Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.
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Every December, I host a tree-trimming party. I serve chili with cornbread and lots of good wine. It's a wonderful party, and it shows how much adults like to play.
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For a person who grew up in the '30s and '40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, 'Here I am, read me.' Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.
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Glory falls around us as we sob a dirge of desolation on the Cross and hatred is the ballast of the rock
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It's so tedious writing cookbooks or writing the recipes because I've never been much of a measurer. But to write a book, you have to measure everything.
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Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.
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Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, 'I'm not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.' Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, 'Yes, I deserve it.'
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If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.
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I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.
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Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it's right, it's easy. It's the other way round, too. If it's slovenly written, then it's hard to read. It doesn't give the reader what the careful writer can give the reader.
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All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.
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I got my own back.