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I Read The Bible To Myself; I'll Take Any Translation, Any Edition, And Read It Aloud, Just To Hear The Language, Hear The Rhythm, And Remind Myself How Beautiful English Is.

-Maya Angelou

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I Read The Bible

Maya Angelou

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I Read The Bible To Myself; I'll Take Any Translation, Any Edition, And Read It Aloud, Just To Hear The Language, Hear The Rhythm, And Remind Myself How Beautiful English Is.

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History, Despite Its Wrenching Pain, Cannot Be Unlived, But If Faced With Courage, Need Not Be Lived Again.

My Doctor Told Me That I Really Should Lose Some Weight. "you're Mildly Obese," He Said. And I Thought, "well, Who Couldn't Afford To Lose 20 Or 30 Pounds?" He Said, "well, A Person In Your Category." I Said, "what Is That Category, Doctor?" He Said, "well, You're What I Call Upwardly Middle Aged." And I Said, "i Forgive You For Everything."

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Something Better

The Hope, The Hope That Lives In The Breast Of The Black American, Is Just So Tremendous That It Overwhelms Me Sometimes.

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You Can Never Go Home Again, But The Truth Is You Can Never Leave Home, So It's All Right.

My Grandmother Told Me That Every Good Thing I Do Helps Some Human Being In The World. I Believed Her 50 Years Ago And Still Do.

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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.

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I Know For Sure That Love Saves Me And That It Is Here To Save Us All.

I Keep Hitting The Escape Button But I Am Still Here!

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There Is Nothing So Pitiful As A Young Cynic Because He Has Gone From Knowing Nothing To Believing Nothing.

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I Think Music Is One Of The Hero/sheroes Of The African-american Existence.

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I Make Writing As Much A Part Of My Life As I Do Eating Or Listening To Music.

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If You Happen To Fall In Love With Someone In Another Race, It's More Difficult, Because You Have To Translate Yourself.

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Won't It Be Wonderful When Black History And Native American History And Jewish History And All Of U.s. History Is Taught From One Book. Just U.s. History.

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Tragedy, No Matter How Sad, Becomes Boring To Those Not Caught In Its Addictive Caress.

We Are Only As Blind As We Want To Be.

We Need Much Less Than We Think We Need.

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When A Person Is Going Through Hell, And She Encounters Someone Who Went Through Hellish Hell And Survived, Then She Can Say, 'mine Is Not So Bad As All That. She Came Through, And So Can I.'

Life Is Pure Adventure, And The Sooner We Realize That, The Quicker We Will Be Able To Treat Life As Art.

I Am Always Talking About The Human Condition And About American Society In Particular: What It Is Like To Be Human, What Makes Us Weep, What Makes Us Fall And Stumble And Somehow Rise And Go On From Darkness Into Darkness And That Darkness Carpeted.

We Are Here To Love Each Other. That Is Why You Are Alive. That Is What Life Is For.

Love Each Other

The Woman Who Survives Intact And Happy Must Be At Once Tender And Tough.

Bringing The Gifts That My Ancestors Gave, I Am The Dream And The Hope Of The Slave. I Rise. I Rise. I Rise.

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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.

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There's Something Beautiful About The Fact That Obama Was Not Just Elected, But Elected Decisively Across Racial, And Socio-economic And Cultural Groups And That We All Celebrated In His Win.

Poetry Helps My Soul Escape Its Encasement.

If More Africans Had Eaten Missionaries, The Continent Would Be In Better Shape.

The Sadness Of The Women's Movement Is That They Don't Allow The Necessity Of Love. See, I Don't Personally Trust Any Revolution Where Love Is Not Allowed.

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.

I Thought I'm Going To Die. So Why Can't I Do Everything? And What Is This Idea That I Worked All Day Yesterday, So I'm Tired Today? I've Never Believed That.i Thought, "just Suppose I Could Choreograph A Ballet." And I Did It. Suppose I Could Teach Dance At The Theater In Cleveland. And I Did It. Suppose I Could Sing For A Living - That I Could Stop These Two Jobs As A Waitress And A Salesperson.

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.

We Love And Lose In China, We Weep On England's Moors, And Laugh And Moan In Guinea, And Thrive On Spanish Shores. We Seek Success In Finland, Are Born And Die In Maine. In Minor Ways We Differ, In Major We're The Same.

I Am Grateful To Be A Woman. I Must Have Done Something Great In Another Life.

Just Like Moons And Suns, With Certainty Of Tides, Just Like Hopes Springing High, Still I'll Rise.

I Wasn't A Pretty Girl. I Was Six Feet Tall At 15, You Know.

I Am Serious, So I Laugh A Lot. You Need To Laugh. You Don't Laugh Enough. I Don't Trust Anyone Who Doesn't Laugh.

When My Grandmother Died, I Realized That Even If I Had Millions Of Dollars, I Couldn't Find Her Anywhere On Earth. My Next Thought Was That I Would Die. I Looked At My Life And Thought, "i'm Afraid To Die." I Concluded That Whether I Was Afraid Or Not, I Would Die. It Was One Of The Most Important Crossroads In My Life, Once I Realized That No Matter What, I Would Do This Thing, The Next Step Was To Think, "if I Am Going To Do The Most Difficult And Frightening Thing - Dying - Is It Possible That I Could Do Some Difficult And Impossible Things That Are Good?"

Impossible Things

Language. I Loved It. And For A Long Time I Would Think Of Myself, Of My Whole Body, As An Ear.

The Problem I Have With Haters Is That They See My Glory, But They Don't Know My Story.

Through The Centuries, We Faced Down Death By Daring To Hope.

It Is Impossible To Struggle For Civil Rights, Equal Rights For Blacks, Without Including Whites. Because Equal Rights, Fair Play, Justice, Are All Like The Air: We All Have It, Or None Of Us Has It. That Is The Truth Of It.

We Can Be Better, We Can Be Wiser, We Can Be More Kind. Yes We Have To Change. We Have To Grow Up And Stop Acting Like 10 Years Old. Yes There Is Much To Do, Much To See, Much To Go Into.

Intelligence Is A Separate Gift, For The Benefit Of Students, So That They May Think Of Themselves As Intellectual And Not Very Intelligent, Or Intelligent And Not Very Intellectual. One Hopes, Of Course, That They Try To Bring The Two Virtues, The Two Elements, Into Their Lives At The Same Time.

The Real Difficulty Is To Overcome How You Think About Yourself. If We Don't Have That We Never Grow, We Never Learn, And Sure As Hell We Should Never Teach.

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.

You Have To Have Courage To Love Somebody. Because You Risk Everything. Everything.

I Would Say You Might Encounter Many Defeats But You Must Never Be Defeated, Ever. In Fact, It Might Even Be Necessary To Confront Defeat. It Might Be Necessary, To Get Over It, All The Way Through It, And Go On. I Would Teach Her To Laugh A Lot. Laugh A Lot At The - And The Silliest Things And Be Very, Very Serious. I'd Teach Her To Love Life, I Can Bet You That.

I Encourage Courtesy. To Accept Nothing Less Than Courtesy, And To Give Nothing Less Than Courtesy.

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.

My Heart Is So Heavy When I See The Reality Of The Indian Reservation And As An American, I Know I Am, Too, Responsible.

Try, Start Always At Home. This Is My Encouragement To All Writers, Start At Home. All Virtues And Vices Begin At Home, And Then Spread Abroad.

When The Storyteller Tells The Truth, She Reminds Us That Human Beings Are More Alike Than Unalike... A Story Is What It's Like To Be A Human Being-to Be Knocked Down And To Miraculously Arise. Each One Of Us Has Arisen, Awakened. We Do Rise.

Courage Allows The Successful Woman To Fail - And To Learn Powerful Lessons From The Failure - So That In The End, She Didn't Fail At All.

It's Good To Remember That In Crises, Natural Crises, Human Beings Forget For Awhile Their Ignorances, Their Biases, Their Prejudices. For A Little While, Neighbors Help Neighbors And Strangers Help Strangers.

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!

Still, When It Looked Like The Sun Wasn't Going To Shine Anymore, God Put A Rainbow In The Clouds.

To Know And Not To Do Is In Fact Not To Know. We Need To Be Active Instruments Against Evil. We Need To Do.

The Real Difficulty Is To Overcome How You Think About Yourself. If We Don't Have That We Never Grow, We Never Learn, And Sure As Hell We Should Never Teach.

I'm Very Blessed That I Have A Healthy Temper. I Can Become Quite Angry And Burning In Anger, But I Have Never Been Bitter. Bitterness Is A Corrosive, Terrible Acid. It Just Eats You And Makes You Sick.

The Best Comfort Food Will Always Be Greens, Cornbread, And Fried Chicken.

I Am Convinced That Courage Is The Most Important Of All The Virtues. Because Without Courage, You Cannot Practice Any Other Virtue Consistently. You Can Be Kind For A While; You Can Be Generous For A While; You Can Be Just For A While, Or Merciful For A While, Even Loving For A While. But It Is Only With Courage That You Can Be Persistently And Insistently Kind And Generous And Fair.

The Desire To Reach For The Stars Is Ambitious. The Desire To Reach Hearts Is Wise.

If I Insist On Being Pessimistic, There Is Always Tomorrow. Today I Am Blessed.

I Am Convinced That Most People Do Not Grow Up ... Our Real Selves, The Children Inside, Are Still Innocent And Shy As Magnolias.

I Refuse To Allow Any Man-made Differences To Separate Me From Any Other Human Beings.

If We Lose Love And Self Respect For Each Other, This Is How We Finally Die.

I'm A Positive Thinker And Actor. I Look At A Glass; A Negative Person Sees The Glass And Says: Too Bad It's Half Empty... I Look At The Same Glass And Say: Hallelujah!! It's Half Full!!!

I Certainly Do Not Adore The Writer's Discipline. I Have Lost Lovers, Endangered Friendships, And Blundered Into Eccentricity, Impelled By A Concentration Which Usually Is To Be Found Only In The Minds Of People About To Be Executed In The Next Half Hour.

I Am Serious, So I Laugh A Lot. You Need To Laugh. You Don't Laugh Enough. I Don't Trust Anyone Who Doesn't Laugh.

[librarians] Study Their Field With As Much Determination And As Much Delight As Open-heart Surgeons.

Human Beings Are More Alike Than Unalike. Whether In Paris, Texas, Or Paris, France, We All Want To Have Good Jobs Where We Are Needed And Respected And Paid Just A Little More Than We Deserve. We Want Healthy Children, Safe Streets, To Be Loved And Have The Unmitigated Gall To Accept Love. If We Are Religious, We Want A Place To Perpetuate God. If Not, We Want A Good Lecture Every Once In A While. And Everyone Wants Someplace To Party On Saturday Nights.

One Isn't Born With Courage. One Develops It By Doing Small Courageous Things-in The Way That If One Sets Out To Pick Up A 100-pound Bag Of Rice, One Would Be Advised To Start With A Five-pound Bag, Then 10 Pounds, Then 20 Pounds, And So Forth, Until One Builds Up Enough Muscle To Lift The 100-pound Bag. It's The Same Way With Courage. You Do Small Courageous Things That Require Some Mental And Spiritual Exertion.

I Am Grateful To Have Been Loved And To Be Loved Now And To Be Able To Love, Because That Liberates. Love Liberates. It Doesn't Just Hold - That's Ego. Love Liberates. It Doesn't Bind. Love Says, 'i Love You. I Love You If You're In China. I Love You If You're Across Town. I Love You If You're In Harlem. I Love You. I Would Like To Be Near You. I'd Like To Have Your Arms Around Me. I'd Like To Hear Your Voice In My Ear. But That's Not Possible Now, So I Love You. Go.'

If I Have A Monument In This World, It Is My Son.

Oh, The Holiness Of Always Being The Injured Party. The Historically Oppressed Can Find Not Only Sanctity But Safety In The Stateof Victimization. When Access To A Better Life Has Been Denied Often Enough, And Successfully Enough, One Can Use The Rejection As An Excuse To Cease All Efforts. After All, One Reckons, "they" Don't Want Me, "they" Accept Their Own Mediocrity And Refuse My Best, "they" Don't Deserve Me.

I Know That I've Been Guided By God. I Am Obedient.

Reality Has Changed Chameleonlike Before My Eyes So Many Times That I Have Learned, Or Am Learning, To Trust Almost Anything Except What Appears To Be So.

We Are Not Just Flesh And Blood. And Our Hungers Are Not Going To Be Set Aside As Just Flesh And Blood.

Flesh And Blood

The Caged Bird Sings With A Fearful Trill, Of Things Unknown, But Longed For Still, And His Tune Is Heard On The Distant Hill, For The Caged Bird Sings Of Freedom.

Life Offers Us Tickets To Places Which We Have Not Knowingly Asked For.

I Keep On Dying, Because I Love To Live

I Married A Man Once And We Had Been Married Over A Year Before I Found He Preferred Potatoes. I Said, "i Didn't Know You Loved Potatoes." And He Said That Until He Was About 13, He Thought Rice Was Potato Seeds.

Living A Life Is Like Constructing A Building: If You Start Wrong, You'll End Wrong.

I Am A Very Religious Person, So It Is The Presence Of God, The Constant Unwavering, Unrelenting Presence Of God Which Continues To Help Me To Keep A Character Which I Am Proud To Show.

I Think That That's The Wisest Thing - To Prevent Illness Before We Try To Cure Something.

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.

When A Person Is Going Through Hell, And She Encounters Someone Who Went Through Hellish Hell And Survived, Then She Can Say, 'mine Is Not So Bad As All That. She Came Through, And So Can I.'

Being Physically Close To Extreme Power Causes One To Experience A Giddiness, An Intoxication.

I Did Then What I Knew How To Do. Now That I Know Better, I Do Better.

Today, The First & Last Of Every Tree/ Speaks To Humankind. Come To Me, Here Beside The River.

Have A Purpose To Your Life: Purpose Does Not Mean Having A Job...you Can Have A Job And Still Be Unfulfilled.

I Am A Child Of God. I Always Carry That With Me.

A Friend May Be Waiting Behind A Stranger's Face.

Had I Known That The Heart Breaks Slowly, Dismantling Itself Into Unrecognizable Plots Of Misery... Had I Known Yet I Would Have Loved You, Your Brash And Insolent Beauty, Your Heavy Comedic Face And Knowledge Of Sweet Delights, But From A Distance I Would Have Left You Whole And Wholly For The Delectation Of Those Who Wanted More And Cared Less.

If You Must Look Back, Do So Forgivingly. If You Will Look Forward, Do So Prayerfully. But The Wisest Course Would Be To Be Present In The Present Gratefully.

I'm A Writer And Writers Either Have Good Memories Or Nothing At All.

We Must Create A Climate Where People Agree That Human Beings Are More Alike Than Unalike. The Only Way To Do That Is Through Education.

This Conference ? Of, For And About Women ? Is, In Itself, A Rainbow In The Clouds. When Numerous Women Come Together And Show That They Care, Not Only For Themselves But Also For Each Other, That Is The Occasion When A Rainbow Is Shining Down On Somebody Else.

I'm A Serious Aficionada Of Country Music - Reba Mcentire, Toby Keith, Montgomery Gentry. I've Even Written Some Songs. They Haven't Done Anything Of Mine Yet. But It's Only A Matter Of Time.

In Today's Climate In Our Country, Which Is Sickened With The Pollution Of Pollution, Threatened With The Prominence Of Aids, Riddled With Burgeoning Racism, Rife With Growing Huddles Of The Homeless, We Need Art And We Need Art In All Forms. We Need All Methods Of Art To Be Present, Everywhere Present, And All The Time Present.

It's Amazing. I Can Do Anything. And Do It Well. Any Good Thing, I Can Do It. That's Why I Am Who I Am, Yes, Because God Loves Me And I'm Amazed At It. I'm Grateful For It.

Talent Is Like Electricity. We Don't Understand Electricity. We Use It.

We May Encounter Many Defeats, But We Must Not Be Defeated. It May Even Be Necessary To Encounter The Defeat So That We Can Know Who We Are. So That We Can See, "oh, That Happened, And I Rose. I Did Get Knocked Down Flat In Front Of The Whole World, And I Rose. I Didn't Run Away; I Rose Right Where I'd Been Knocked Down." That's How You Get To Know Yourself.

We Are Loved By Love Itself. There Is Nothing Good That We Can't Do.

It Is Imperative That Young White Men And Women Study The Black American History. It Is Imperative That Blacks And Whites Study The Asian American History.

The Ache For Home Lives In All Of Us, The Safe Place Where We Can Go As We Are And Not Be Questioned.

Therefore We Pledge To Bind Ourselves To One Another, To Embrace Our Lowliest, To Keep Company With Our Loneliest, To Educate Our Illiterate, To Feed Our Starving, To Clothe Our Ragged, To Do All Good Things, Knowing That We Are More Than Keepers Of Our Brothers And Sisters. We Are Our Brothers And Sisters

Pretty Women Wonder Where My Secret Lies, Im Not Cute Or Built To Fit A Fashion Models Size.

I Do Hope That Young Men And Women Will Start To Think For Themselves And Start To Take Responsibility For Their Own Thoughts.

It Is This Belief In A Power Larger Than Myself And Other Than Myself Which Allows Me To Venture Into The Unknown And Even The Unknowable.

Love Costs All We Are And Will Ever Be. Yet It Is Only Love Which Sets Us Free. A Brave And Startling Truth.

You Rose Into My Life Like A Promised Sunrise, Brightening My Days With The Light In Your Eyes. I've Never Been So Strong. Now I'm Where I Belong.

Life Is A Gift, And I Try To Respond With Grace And Courtesy.

The Subject Of The Poem Usually Dictates The Rhythm Or The Rhyme And Its Form. Sometimes, When You Finish The Poem And You Think The Poem Is Finished, The Poem Says, "you're Not Finished With Me Yet," And You Have To Go Back And Revise, And You May Have Another Poem Altogether. It Has Its Own Life To Live.

If One Is Lucky, A Solitary Fantasy Can Totally Transform One Million Realities.

Beneath The Skin, Beyond The Differing Features And Into The True Heart Of Being, Fundamentally, We Are More Alike, My Friend, Than We Are Unalike.

The Plague Of Racism Is Insidious, Entering Into Our Minds As Smoothly And Quietly And Invisibly As Floating Airborne Microbes Enter Into Our Bodies To Find Lifelong Purchase In Our Bloodstreams.

Listen To Some Good Poetry. You See? It Keeps Us From Thinking We Are Only What Our Blatant Appetites Describe Us As.

Each Of Us Needs To Withdraw From The Cares Which Will Not Withdraw From Us. We Need Hours Of Aimless Wandering Or Spates Of Time Sitting On Park Benches, Observing The Mysterious World Of Ants And The Canopy Of Treetops.

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