“Listen carefully to what country people call mother wit. In those homely sayings are couched the collective wisdom of generations.”
— Maya Angelou
“We are the victims of the world’s most comprehensive robbery. Life demands a balance. It’s all right if we do a little robbing now.”
“All my work, my life, everything I do is about survival, not just bare, awful, plodding survival, but survival with grace and faith. While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated.”
“Do not be wedded forever to fear, yoked eternally to brutishness.”
“Money and power can liberate only if they are used to do so. They can imprison and inhibit more finally than barred windows and iron chains.”
“Modesty is a learned affectation. It’s no good. Humility is great, because humility says, ‘There was someone before me. I’m following in somebody’s footsteps.’”
“I love a Hebrew National hot dog with an ice-cold Corona – no lime. If the phone rings, I won’t answer until I’m done.”
“If we all hold on to the mistake, we can’t see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can’t see what we’re capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one’s own self.”
“The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear.”
“In a world so rife with vulgarity, with brutality and violence, love exists. I’m grateful to know that it exists.”
“A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but a woman called by a devaluing name will only be weakened by the misnomer.”
“Sometimes all you need in love is to make each other happy, to make each other laugh. So long as you can still do that ten years down the line then I think you’re gold. Never let the laughter slip from your relationship.”
“One must know not just how to accept a gift, but with what grace to share it.”
“Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity.”
“Step off the road. Build yourself a brand new path.”
“To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.”
“Look what you’ve already come through! Don’t deny it. Say I’m stronger than I thought I was.”
“When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature.”
“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.”
“Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise. Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear, I rise.”
“You can’t forgive without loving. And I don’t mean sentimentality. I don’t mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, ‘I forgive. I’m finished with it.’”
“In an unfamiliar culture, it is wise to offer no innovations, no suggestions, or lessons.”
“It’s very important to know the neighbor next door and the people down the street and the people in another race.”
“If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.”
“If men are God’s gift to women, then God must really love gag gifts.”
“Anyone of us can be a rainbow in somebody’s clouds. I want the University of Cincinnati to be a rainbow in the clouds. The University of Cincinnati is really a possibility of hope; it is a rainbow.”
“Sometimes guns really matter. Protecting those who need protection – children, women, minorities in rough parts of town, old folks living in places where cops aren’t nearby. Guns are true empowerment for the powerless.”
“In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn’t really, absolutely know what whites looked like.”
“Achievement brings its own anticlimax.”
“Don’t let anybody raise you. You’ve been raised.”
“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.”
“If I insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow. Today I am blessed.”
“People feel guilty. And guilt is stymieing. Guilt immobilizes. Guilt closes the air ducts and the veins, and makes people ignorant.”
“Education is a process that goes on ’til death. The moment you see someone who knows she has found the one true way, and can call all the others false, then you know you’re in the company of an ignoramus.”
“Nothing hurts more than realizing they meant everything to you, but you meant nothing to them.”
“A person is the product of their dreams. So make sure to dream great dreams. And then try to live your dream.”
“There is no place where God is not.”
“The world had taken a deep breath and was having doubts about continuing to revolve.”
“When we decide to be happy we accept the responsibility to bring happiness to someone else.”
“When I passed forty I dropped pretense, ’cause men like women who got some sense.”
“Independence is a heady draught, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.”
“The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.”
“In order to be profoundly dishonest, a person must have one of two qualities: either he is unscrupulously ambitious, or he is unswervingly egocentric.”
“Be courageous, but not foolhardy. Walk proud as you are.”
“When I was asked to do something good, I often say yes, I’ll try, yes, I’ll do my best. And part of that is believing, if God loves me, if God made everything from leaves to seals and oak trees, then what is it I can’t do?”
“The black kids, the poor white kids, Spanish-speaking kids, and Asian kids in the US – in the face of everything to the contrary, they still bop and bump, shout and go to school somehow. Their optimism gives me hope.”
“Shelter Network’s programs and services are a rainbow in the clouds for homeless children and adults.”
“Tragedy, no matter how sad, becomes boring to those not caught in its addictive caress.”
“Life offers us tickets to places which we have not knowingly asked for.”
“Everything costs and costs the earth.”
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