Maya Angelou

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. - Maya Angelou

The honorary duty of a human being is to love. - Maya Angelou

Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better. - Maya Angelou

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded. - Maya Angelou

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain. - Maya Angelou

Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise. {from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings} - Maya Angelou

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. - Maya Angelou

The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn't need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder -- in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever. - Maya Angelou

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

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 a commensurate speed. - Maya Angelou

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water. - Maya Angelou

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education. - Maya Angelou

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. - Maya Angelou

Courage - you develop courage by doing small things like just as if you wouldn't want to pick up a 100-pound weight without preparing yourself. - Maya Angelou

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

Try to be a rainbow to someone else's cloud. - Maya Angelou

We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color. - Maya Angelou

She began the first of what we later called 'my lessons in living.' She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. {I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings (1970)}  - Maya Angelou