Maya Angelou Biography
- Full Name : Marguerite Annie Johnson
- Born : April 4, 1928 (Saint Louis, Missouri, U.S)
- Dead : May 28, 2014 (Winston-Salem, North Carolina, U.S)
- Nationality : American
- Profession : Author, Poet, Actress, Civil Right Activist.
- University : Wake Forest University
- Spouses : Tosh Angelos
- Awards :
- Grammy Award.
- Presidential Medal of Freedom.
- National Medal of Arts.
- National Women's Hall of Fame.
- Spingarn Medal.
- Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Album.
Books of Maya Angelou :
- His Day Is Done.
- On the Pulse of Morning.
- Mom & Me & Mom
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
- Down in the Delta.
- Letter to My Daughter.
- Kofi and His Magic
- A Song Flung Up to Heaven
- Lessons in Living
Facts About Maya Angelou :
- Maya Angelou was the first Black female streetcar conductor.
- Martin Luther King, Jr. died on Maya Angelou birthday.
- Maya Angelou spoke six languages : English, French, Spanish, Italian, Hebrew, and Fante (Ghanian dialect)
- Maya Angelou was the first Black poet to present at a presidential inauguration.
Maya Angelou Quotes
1. “ Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope. ”
— Maya Angelou
2. “ 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. ”
— Maya Angelou
3. “ All great achievements require time. ”
— Maya Angelou
4. “ We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated. ”
— Maya Angelou
5. “ If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded. ”
— Maya Angelou
6. “ I work very hard, and I play very hard. I’m grateful for life. And I live it – I believe life loves the liver of it. I live it. ”
— Maya Angelou
7. “ If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love. ”
— Maya Angelou
8. “ Nothing will work unless you do. ”
— Maya Angelou
9. “ If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. ”
— Maya Angelou
10. “ Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age. ”
— Maya Angelou
11. “ I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too. ”
— Maya Angelou
12. “ I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life. ”
— Maya Angelou
13. “ Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning. ”
— Maya Angelou
14. “ If you’re always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be. ”
— Maya Angelou
15. “ My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine. ”
— Maya Angelou
16. “ Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you learned it. ”
— Maya Angelou
17. “ 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. ”
— Maya Angelou
18. “ I know for sure that loves saves me and that it is here to save us all. ”
— Maya Angelou
19. “ Success is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it. ”
— Maya Angelou
20. “ You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot – it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive. ”
— Maya Angelou
21. “ 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. ”
— Maya Angelou
22. “ 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! ”
— Maya Angelou
23. “ 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. ”
— Maya Angelou
24. “ I did then what I knew best, when I knew better, I did better. ”
— Maya Angelou
25. “ Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of. ”
— Maya Angelou
26. “ The only way out of something is all the way through it. ”
— Maya Angelou
27. “ Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud. ”
— Maya Angelou
28. “ The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. ”
— Maya Angelou
29. “ Faith is the evidence of the unseen. ”
— Maya Angelou
30. “ 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
31. “ No human being can be more human than another human being. I liberate you from my ignorance. ”
— Maya Angelou
32. “ A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim. ”
— Maya Angelou
33. “ I created myself. I have taught myself so much. ”
— Maya Angelou
34. “ Peace means when there is conflict, use our common sense and our compassion to consider rest of humanity, our human brothers and sisters. ”
— Maya Angelou
35. “ 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. ”
— Maya Angelou
36. “ If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me? ”
— Maya Angelou
37. “ I have respect for the past, but I’m a person of the moment. ”
— Maya Angelou
38. “ We begin to stop in order simply to begin again. ”
— Maya Angelou
39. “ One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest. ”
— Maya Angelou
40. “ Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. ”
— Maya Angelou
41. “ My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return. ”
— Maya Angelou
42. “ 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. ”
— Maya Angelou
43. “ There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it. ”
— Maya Angelou
44. “ It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody. ”
— Maya Angelou
45. “ 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. ”
— Maya Angelou
46. “ I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver. ”
— Maya Angelou
47. “ You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody. ”
— Maya Angelou
48. “ I love the song ‘I Hope You Dance’ by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it. ”
— Maya Angelou
49. “ Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more. ”
— Maya Angelou
50. “ Take as much time as you need to make up your mind, but once it is made up, step out on your decision like it’s something you want. ”
— Maya Angelou
51. “ We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. ”
— Maya Angelou
52. “ I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn. ”
— Maya Angelou
53. “ You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. ”
— Maya Angelou
54. “ I believe that every person is born with talent. ”
— Maya Angelou
55. “ It’s hard to make the prettiest clothes fit a miserable man. ”
— Maya Angelou
56. “ Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time. ”
— Maya Angelou
57. “ We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike. ”
— Maya Angelou
58. “ Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: ‘I’m with you kid. Let’s go. ”
— Maya Angelou
59. “ I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right. ”
— Maya Angelou
60. “ A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. ”
— Maya Angelou
61. “ I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. ”
— Maya Angelou
62. “ I find relief from the questions only when I concede that I am not obliged to know everything. I remind myself it is sufficient to know what I know, and that what I know, may not always be true. ”
— Maya Angelou
63. “ 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. ”
— Maya Angelou
64. “ They may have forgotten how badly they treated you, or they may pretend that they have forgotten. But watch: They will come back to you. ”
— Maya Angelou
65. “ I swear to God, I rather you have a good mind than a cute behind. ”
— Maya Angelou
66. “ Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option. ”
— Maya Angelou
67. “ Let nothing dim the light that shines from within. ”
— Maya Angelou
68. “ There’s something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know. ”
— Maya Angelou
69. “ You can’t get too high for somebody to bring you down. ”
— Maya Angelou
70. “ When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. ”
— Maya Angelou
71. “ I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. ”
— Maya Angelou
72. “ All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us all that we are more alike than we are unalike. ”
— Maya Angelou
73. “ 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. ”
— Maya Angelou
74. “ I had to trust life, since I was young enough to believe that life loved the person who dared to live it. ”
— Maya Angelou
75. “ If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain. ”
— Maya Angelou
76. “ Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better. ”
— Maya Angelou
77. “ Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible…We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated. ”
— Maya Angelou
78. “ In all my work what I try to say is that as human beings we are more alike than we are unalike. ”
— Maya Angelou
79. “ On this platform of peace, we can create a language to translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other. ”
— Maya Angelou
80. “ Always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. ”
— Maya Angelou
81. “ Take a day to heal from the lies you’ve told yourself and the ones that have been told to you. ”
— Maya Angelou
82. “ Believe people when they tell you who they are. They know themselves better than you. ”
— Maya Angelou
83. “ I make writing as much a part of my life as I do eating or listening to music. ”
— Maya Angelou
84. “ 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. ”
— Maya Angelou
85. “ I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I’m praying, but also something wonderful happens to me. I’m grateful that I’m heard. ”
— Maya Angelou
86. “ The woman who truly intends to live a good life is already living phenomenally since intent is part of the achievement. ”
— Maya Angelou
87. “ Seek patience and passion in equal amounts. Patience alone will not build the temple. Passion alone will destroy its walls. ”
— Maya Angelou
88. “ “I hope you always find a reason to smile. ”
— Maya Angelou
89. “ There is nothing a person can’t do, and there should be nothing a human being didn’t care about. It was the most positive encouragement I could have hoped for. ”
— Maya Angelou
90. “ ll knowledge is spendable currency, depending on the market. ”
— Maya Angelou