Maya Angelou Life Quotations

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

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

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning 'Good morning' at total strangers.

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

I thank God I'm myself and for the life I'm given to live and for friends and lovers and beloveds, and I thank God for knowing that all those people have already paid for me.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.

Don't let the incidents which take place in life bring you low. And certainly don't whine. You can be brought low, that's OK, but don't be reduced by them. Just say, 'That's life.'

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring still.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: 'I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.'

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'

At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

If you want what you're saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody's life. Your own, first.

I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that's walked a song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more.

I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, 'No. No, I'm finished. Bye.' And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won't do that.

I was born in St. Louis but lived there just for a few minutes in my life.

My life has been one great big joke, A dance that's walked, A song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke, When I think about myself.

love life, engage in it, give it all you've got. love it with a passion, because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it

At one time in my life, from the time I was seven until I was about 13, I didn't speak. I only spoke to my brother. The reason I didn't speak: I had been molested, and I told the name of the molester to my brother who told it to the family.

My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.

I’m grateful for being here, for being able to think, for being able to see, for being able to taste, for appreciating love – for knowing that it exists in a world so rife with vulgarity, with brutality and violence, and yet love exists. I’m grateful to know that it exists.

When you learn, teach, when you get, give.

You will face many defeats in your life, but never let yourself be defeated.

I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being.

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God's creation.

Love life. Engage in it. Give it all you've got. Love it with a passion because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it.

Living well is an art that can be developed: a love of life and ability to take great pleasure from small offerings and assurance that the world owes you nothing and that every gift is exactly that, a gift.

And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.

Life is a gift, and i try to respond with grace and courtesy.

Remember, people will judge you by your actions not your intentions. You may have a heart of gold but so does a hard-boiled egg.

Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs?

In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.

Determine to live life with flair and laughter.

No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure. . . Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain flexible enough to notice and admit when what we expected to happen did not happen. We need to remember that we are created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.

Life loves the liver of it.

The problem I have with haters is that they see my glory, but they don't know my story...

The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.

I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.

The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.

We are only as blind as we want to be.

It is sad but true that sometimes we need the tragedy to help us to see how human we are and how we are more alike than we are different.

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.

We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.

Life loves the liver of it. You must live and life will be good to you.

If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?

When you know better you do better.

I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'.

I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at commensurate speed.

Live life as if it were created just for you.

You only are free when you realize you belong no place - you belong every place - no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.

I believe in living a poetic life, an art full life. Everything we do from the way we raise our children to the way we welcome our friends is part of a large canvas we are creating.

I had to trust life and believe that life loved the person who dared to live it.

Life loves the person who dares to live it.

If we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.

I believe talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it. You can plug into it and light up a lamp, keep a heart pump going, light a cathedral, or you can electrocute a person with it. Electricity will do all that. It makes no judgment. I think talent is like that. I believe every person is born with talent.

Try to live your life in a way that you will not regret years of useless virtue and inertia and timidity.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive

The happy heart runs with the river, floats on the air, lifts to the music, soars with the eagle, hopes with the prayer.

The question is not how to survive, but how to thrive with passion, compassion, humor and style.

Wouldn't take nothing for my journey now.

There were people who went to sleep last night, poor and rich and white and black, but they will never wake again. And those dead folks would give anything at all for just five minutes of this weather or ten minutes of plowing. So you watch yourself about complaining. What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it.

Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible, and live long lives.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

Be present in all things and thankful for all things.

Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.

Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art.

Success is loving life and daring to live it.

You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise!

I make writing as much a part of my life as I do eating or listening to music.

To grow up is to stop putting blame on parents

All knowledge is spendable currency, depending on the market.

You can only become great at something you are willing to sacrifice for

Hope for the best, be prepared for the worse. Life is shocking, but you must never appear to be shocked. For no matter how bad it is it could be worse and no matter how good it is it could be better.

Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.

Light and shadow are opposite sides of the same coin. We can illuminate our paths or darken our way. It is a matter of choice.

You might encounter defeats but you must never be defeated... Love a lot. Laugh a lot at the silliest things and be very serious... love life.

Life is a glorious banquet, a limitless and delicious buffet.

The woman who truly intends to live a good life is already living phenomenally since intent is part of the achievement.

And one of my absolute favorite quotes of all-time, one that I've adopted as one of my greatest life mottos: Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: "I'm with you kid. Let's go."

Living a life is like constructing a building: if you start wrong, you'll end wrong.

I've had people explain to me what one of my poems meant, and I've been surprised that it means that to them. If a person can use a poem of mine to interpret her life or his life, good. I can't control that. Nor would I want to.

We are here to love each other. That is why you are alive. That is what life is for.

I look at some of the great novelists, and I think the reason they are great is that they're telling the truth. The fact is they're using made-up names, made-up people, made-up places, and made-up times, but they're telling the truth about the human being- what we are capable of, what makes us lose, laugh, weep, fall down, and gnash our teeth and wring our hands and kill each other and love each other.