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If I'm Here, I'll Be Trying To Be A Better Human Being, A Better Writer, A Better Friend And A Better Beloved.
-Maya Angelou
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If I'm Here, I'll

Maya Angelou
...
If I'm Here, I'll Be Trying To Be A Better Human Being, A Better Writer, A Better Friend And A Better Beloved.

Understanding the Quote: "if i'm here, i'll be trying to be a better human being,..."

This quote by Maya Angelou reflects deeply on the theme of trying. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Trying, Beloved, Humans, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Maya Angelou interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou is celebrated for insightful thoughts on trying and beloved. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 39581
Topic
Trying
Beloved
Humans
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What We Really Have To Do Is Take A Day And Sit Down And Think. The World Is Not Going To End Or Fall Apart. Jobs Won't Be Lost. Kids Will Not Run Crazy In One Day. Lovers Won't Stop Speaking To You. Husbands And Wives Are Not Going To Disappear. Just Take That One Day And Think. Don't Read. Don't Write. No Television, No Radio, No Distractions. Sit Down And Think. . . . Go Sit In A Church, Or In The Park, Or Take A Long Walk And Think. Call It A Healing Day.
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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.
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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.
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Some Critics Will Write 'maya Angelou Is A Natural Writer' - Which Is Right After Being A Natural Heart Surgeon.
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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. Few, If Any, Survive Their Teens. Most Surrender To The Vague But Murderous Pressure Of Adult Conformity. It Becomes Easier To Die And Avoid Conflict Than To Maintain A Constant Battle With The Superior Forces Of Maturity.
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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.
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Without Courage You Can't Practice Any Other Virtue Consistently.
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I Encourage Courtesy. To Accept Nothing Less Than Courtesy, And To Give Nothing Less Than Courtesy.
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We Need To Haunt The House Of History And Listen Anew To The Ancestors' Wisdom.
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I Refuse To Allow Any Man-made Differences To Separate Me From Any Other Human Beings.
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Just Do Right. Right May Not Be Expedient, It May Not Be Profitable, But It Will Satisfy Your Soul. It Brings You The Kind Of Protection That Bodyguards Can’t Give You. So Try To Live Your Life In A Way That You Will Not Regret Years Of Useless Virtue And Inertia And Timidity. Take Up The Battle. Take It Up. It’s Yours. This Is Your Life. This Is Your World.
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One Isn't Necessarily Born With Courage, But One Is Born With Potential.
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Life Loves The Liver Of It. You Must Live And Life Will Be Good To You.
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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.
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Without Defeats, How Do You Really Know Who The Hell You Are? If You Never Had To Stand Up To Something - To Get Up, To Be Knocked Down, And To Get Up Again - Life Can Walk Over You Wearing Football Cleats. But Each Time You Do Get Up, You're Bigger, Taller, Finer, More Beautiful, More Kind, More Understanding, More Loving. Each Time You Get Up, You're More Inclusive. More People Can Stand Under Your Umbrella.
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Determine To Live Life With Flair And Laughter.
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The Truth Is You Never Can Leave Home. You Take It With You Everywhere You Go. It's Under Your Skin. It Moves The Tongue Or Slows It, Colors The Thinking, Impedes Upon The Logic.
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When You Know You Are Of Worth, You Don't Have To Raise Your Voice, You Don't Have To Become Rude, You Don't Have To Become Vulgar; You Just Are. And You Are Like The Sky Is, As The Air Is, The Same Way Water Is Wet. It Doesn't Have To Protest.
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The Charitable Say In Effect, 'i Seem To Have More Than I Need And You Seem To Have Less Than You Need. I Would Like To Share My Excess With You.' Fine, If My Excess Is Tangible, Money Or Goods, And Fine If Not, For I Learned That To Be Charitable With Gestures And Words Can Bring Enormous Joy And Repair Injured Feelings.
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She Comprehended The Perversity Of Life, That In The Struggle Lies The Joy.
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Then The Question Began To Live Under My Blankets: How Did Lesbianism Begin? What Were The Symptoms? The Public Library Gave Information On The Finished Lesbian--and That Woefully Sketchy--but On The Growth Of A Lesbian, There Was Nothing. I Did Discover That The Difference Between Hermaphrodites And Lesbians Was That Hermaphrodites Were "born That Way." It Was Impossible To Determine Whether Lesbians Budded Gradually, Or Burst Into Being With A Suddenness That Dismayed Them As Much As It Repelled Society.
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I, With Millions Of Other Americans, Have The Same Dream Martin Luther King Jr. Had; When I Wake Up I Wish Some Of The Things I Dreamt Would Be True. I Wish That Little Black And White Boys And Girls Would Hold Hands Without Being Shocked At Their Nearness To Each Other And Say In A Natural Way, "we Have Overcome.
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Life Loves To Be Taken By The Lapel And Told: 'i'm With You Kid. Let's Go.'
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If You Have Done The Best You Can Do And If You Have Gotten All You Could Extract From Something, You Have Given All You Had To Give, Then The Time Has Come When You Can Do No More Than Say Thank You And Move On.
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And If A Person Is Religious, I Think It's Good, It Helps You A Bit. But If You're Not, At Least You Can Have The Sense That There Is A Condition Inside You Which Looks At The Stars With Amazement And Awe.
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Pretty Women Wonder Where My Secret Lies, Im Not Cute Or Built To Fit A Fashion Models Size.
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If I Insist On Being Pessimistic, There Is Always Tomorrow. Today I Am Blessed.
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People Will Never Forget How You Made Them Feel.
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You Can't Be Consistently Fair, Consistently Generous, Consistently Just, Or Consistently Merciful. You Can Be Anything Erratically, But To Be That Thing Time After Time After Time, You Have To Have Courage.
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Let Choice Whisper In Your Ear And Love Murmur In Your Heart. Be Ready. Here Comes Life.
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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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We Allow Our Ignorance To Prevail Upon Us And Make Us Think We Can Survive Alone, Alone In Patches, Alone In Groups, Alone In Races, Even Alone In Genders.
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I Love A Statement By The Apostle Paul, In The Book Of Philippians In The Bible. I Think The Corinthians Had Been Writing To Paul, Telling Him That Old Men Were Chasing Young Women, Nobody Was Tithing - And All That Must Have Run Paul Crazy. He Wrote Back And Said, "if There Be Anything Of Good Report, Speak Of These Things." That's One Of My Principles.it's Another Discipline That I Encourage Myself To Employ - To, As Much As Possible, Say The Courteous Thing, And Then Be It.
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I Have Great Respect For The Past. If You Don't Know Where You've Come From, You Don't Know Where You're Going. I Have Respect For The Past, But I'm A Person Of The Moment. I'm Here, And I Do My Best To Be Completely Centered At The Place I'm At, Then I Go Forward To The Next Place.
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I'm Convinced That I'm A Child Of God. That's Wonderful, Exhilarating, Liberating, Full Of Promise. But The Burden Which Goes Along With That Is, I'm Convinced That Everybody Is A Child Of God. . . . I Weep A Lot. I Thank God I Laugh A Lot, Too. The Main Thing In One's Own Private World Is To Try To Laugh As Much As You Cry.
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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.
Kids
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Encouragement
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.
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We Can See, From California To New York, From Maine To Florida, Seattle To New Mexico - Everywhere There Are Women's Groups. Everywhere There Are Women Who Have Gotten Together To Examine Global Warming, And Women Who Have Gotten Together To Prepare Each Other For Single Parenting - There Are Women Who Have Come Together To Be Supportive To Those Whose Mates Are In Prison, Male Or Female, Partners Are In Prison. All Sorts Of Gatherings Of Women. I Mean, I'm Just Celebrating My 80th Year On This Planet, And I Look Back 50 Years Ago And There Was Nothing Like That.
New York
Mean
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This Is What I Am Learning, At 82 Years Old: The Main Thing Is To Be In Love With The Search For Truth.
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Life
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Raising Kids Is Like Nailing Jell-o To A Tree.
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Tree
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Words Are Things. You Must Be Careful, Careful About Calling People Out Of Their Names, Using Racial Pejoratives And Sexual Pejoratives And All That Ignorance. Don’t Do That. Some Day We’ll Be Able To Measure The Power Of Words. I Think They Are Things. They Get On The Walls. They Get In Your Wallpaper. They Get In Your Rugs, In Your Upholstery, And Your Clothes, And Finally In To You.
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Christmas
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Be Wary When A Naked Person Offers You His Shirt
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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!!!
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Try To Be A Rainbow In Someone's Cloud.
Inspirational
Relationship
Inspiring
Look For The Beauty In Things.
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Education
People
Climate
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Morning
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Wise
Doe
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Writing
Ties
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Defeated You
Giving
Trying
I Have No Modesty. Modesty Is A Learned Affectation. It's Like Decal Stuck Up On A Person.
Modesty
Stuck Up
Stuck
Make Every Effort To Change Things You Do Not Like. If You Cannot Make A Change, Change The Way You Have Been Thinking. You Might Find A New Solution.
Thinking
Effort
Might
Growing Up At My Grandmother's Table, She Always Had Rice. She Might Do Something As Exotic As Potatoes Or Spaghetti, But There Was Still Always Rice, Just In Case You Needed A Little Rice Fix.
Growing Up
Grandmother
Exotic
You Can Never Be Great At Anything Unless You Love It.
Inspirational
Inspiring
The Horizon Leans Forward, Offering You Space To Place New Steps Of Change.
Graduation
Space
Offering
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.
Grateful
Who I Am
God Love
One Of The Problems We Have As Writers Is We Don't Take Ourselves Seriously While Writing; Being Serious Is Setting Aside A Time And Saying If It Comes, Good; If It Doesn't Come, Good, I'll Just Sit Here.
Writing
Serious
Problem
It Is Time For Parents To Teach Young People Early On That In Diversity There Is Beauty And There Is Strength.
Strength
Educational
Teaching
The Truth Is, No One Of Us Can Be Free Until Everybody Is Free.
Truth Is
Never, Never Let A Person Know You're Frightened. And A Group Of Them ... Absolutely Never. Fear Brings Out The Worst In Everybody.
Groups
Frightened
Worst
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
Believe
Home
I Think The More We Know The Better We Are. I Mean Not Just Facts. The More We Know About Each Other, The Closer We Are To Learn Something About Our Selves.
Mean
Thinking
Self
I Might Have It At Six-fifteen A.m. Just As Soon As I Get In, But Usually It's About Eleven O'clock When I'll Have A Glass Of Sherry.
Life Changing
Glasses
Fifteen
I Think I Know That I Deserve Better. And So I Try For Better. I'm Never So Put Off That I Would Ever Walk Out Of A Place Not Having Tried The Best I Could.
Thinking
Deserve Better
Trying
If You Want To Liberate Someone, Love Them.not Be In Love With Them - That's Dangerous. If You're In Love With Your Children, You're In Their Lives All The Time. Leave Them Alone! Let Them Grow And Make Some Mistakes. Tell Them, "you Can Come Home. My Arms Are Here - And My Mouth Is Too." When You Really Love Them, You Don't Want To Possess Them. You Don't Say, "i Love You And I Want You Here With Me."
Children
Mistake
Love You
There Is A World Of Difference Between Facts And The Truth. You Can Have So Many Facts That You Don't Deal With The Truth. You Never Get To The Truth. You Have The Places Where, The People Who, The Times When, The Reasons Why, The Methods How - Blah Blah. And Never Get To The Human Truth. The Human Truth Is As Elusive As The Air. And As Important As The Air.
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Differences
People
There Is A Lot Of Ignorance, And I Don't Mean Intellectual Ignorance. I Mean People Think That If You Get Something, It Will Take Away From What I Have. It's Just Ignorance.
Ignorance
Mean
Thinking
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.
Stories
Heard
Persons
I Want To Thank You, Lord, For Life And All That's In It. Thank You For The Day And For The Hour, And The Minute.
Want
Faith In God
Thank You Lord
It’s The Fire In My Eyes, And The Flash Of My Teeth, The Swing In My Waist, And The Joy In My Feet. I’m A Woman Phenomenally.
Eye
Fire
Swings
The Truth Will Lead Me To All.
Silence
Telling The Truth
Leading Me
There Is Something More - The Spirit, Or The Soul. I Think That That Quality Encourages Our Courtesy And Care And Our Minds. And Mercy, And Identity.
Thinking
Soul
Mind
I Am A Woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal Woman, That's Me.
Inspirational
Motivational
Inspiring
A Leader Sees Greatness In Other People. He Nor She Can Be Much Of A Leader If All She Sees Is Herself.
Greatness
People
Leader
A Single Fantasy Can Transform A Million Realities.
Reality
Fantasy
Millions
This Is What I Am Learning, At 82 Years Old: The Main Thing Is To Be In Love With The Search For Truth.
Inspirational
Life
Wisdom
I Love Wisdom. And You Can Never Be Great At Anything Unless You Love It. Not Be In Love With It, But Love The Thing, Admire The Thing. And It Seems That If You Love The Thing, And You Don't Just Want To Possess It, It Will Find You. But If You're In Love With The Thing, It May Run Like Hell Away From You.
Running
May
Want
Do The Best You Can Until You Know Better. Then When You Know Better, Do Better.
Success
Cancer
Positivity
I Walk Into A Room Just As Cool As You Please, And To A Man, The Fellows Stand Or Fall Down On Their Knees.
Fall
Men
Knees
Most People Don't Grow Up. It's Too Damn Difficult. What Happens Is Most People Get Older.
Growing Up
People
Damn
Words Are Things. You Must Be Careful, Careful About Calling People Out Of Their Names, Using Racial Pejoratives And Sexual Pejoratives And All That Ignorance. Don’t Do That. Some Day We’ll Be Able To Measure The Power Of Words. I Think They Are Things. They Get On The Walls. They Get In Your Wallpaper. They Get In Your Rugs, In Your Upholstery, And Your Clothes, And Finally In To You.
Wall
Ignorance
Thinking
If You're A Human Being, You Can Attempt To Do What Other Human Beings Have Done. We Don't Understand Talent Any More Than We Understand Electricity.
Done
Talent
Electricity
We Allow Our Ignorance To Prevail Upon Us And Make Us Think We Can Survive Alone, Alone In Patches, Alone In Groups, Alone In Races, Even Alone In Genders.
Ignorance
Being Alone
Thinking
When We Give Cheerfully And Accept Gratefully, Everyone Is Blessed.
Thanksgiving
Thankful
Gratitude
Every Day Offers You 10,000 Reasons To Cry, But If You Can Find Just One Reason To Laugh Then You Will Be All Right.
Laughing
Cry
Reason
The Ache For Home Lives In All Of Us, The Safe Place Where We Can Go As We Are And Not Be Questioned.
Life Changing
Home
Acceptance
When We Come To It We Must Confess That We Are The Possible We Are The Miraculous, The True Wonders Of This World, That Is When, And Only When We Come To It
World
Wonder
This World
Since Time Is The One Immaterial Object Which We Cannot Influence - Neither Speed Up Nor Slow Down, Add To Nor Diminish - It Is An Imponderably Valuable Gift. Each Of Us Has A Few Minutes A Day Or A Few Hours A Week Which We Could Donate To An Old Folks Home Or A Children's Hospital Ward. The Elderly Whose Pillows We Plump Or Whose Water Pitchers We Refill May Or May Not Thank Us For Our Gift, But The Gift Is Upholding The Foundation Of The Universe.
Time
Children
War
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.
Life
Travel
Laughter
Bringing The Gifts That My Ancestors Gave, I Am The Dream And The Hope Of The Slave. I Rise. I Rise. I Rise.
Inspirational
Dream
Hope
You Think You May Not Be Heard. Speak Anyway.
Thinking
May
Speak
Mother's Life Flowed Radiant. Flourescent-tipped Waves On Incoming Tides.
Mother
Tides
Wave
I Believe That Quality Level Is Determined Primarily By The Actual Design Of The Product Itself, Not By Quality Control In The Production Process.
Believe
Design
Quality
I Wrote Some Of The Worst Poetry West From The Mississippi River, But I Wrote. And I Finally Sometimes Got It Right.
Rivers
West
Sometimes
To Those Who Have Given Up On Love: I Say, "trust Life A Little Bit.
I Hate You
Littles
Aging
Love Liberates. It Doesn't Just Hold, That's Ego. Love Liberates.
Ego
The Most Important Thing I Can Tell You About Aging Is This: If You Really Feel That You Want To Have An Off-the-shoulder Blouse And Some Big Beads And Thong Sandals And A Dirndl Skirt And A Magnolia In Your Hair, Do It. Even If You're Wrinkled.
Hair
Important
Want
We Are All Creative, But By The Time We Are Three Of Four Years Old, Someone Has Knocked The Creativity Out Of Us. Some People Shut Up The Kids Who Start To Tell Stories. Kids Dance In Their Cribs, But Someone Will Insist They Sit Still. By The Time The Creative People Are Ten Or Twelve, They Want To Be Like Everyone Else.
Creativity
Kids
Years
The Quality Of Strength Lined With Tenderness Is An Unbeatable Combination, As Are Intelligence And Necessity When Unblunted By Formal Education.
Inspirational
Strength
Education
We Are Loved By Love Itself. There Is Nothing Good That We Can't Do.
When I Write, I Tend To Twist My Hair. Something For My Small Mind To Do, I Guess.
Writing
Hair
Mind
Exchange Love For Hate...thereby, Making The Present Comfortable And The Future Promising.
Peace
Hate
Inspirational Forgiveness
My Mother Said I Must Always Be Intolerant Of Ignorance But Understanding Of Illiteracy.
Mother
Teacher
Educational
The Public Library Building, In My View, Is Just A Little Lower Than The Church, The Cathedral, The Temple, The Synagogue And The Mosque. Within Those Walls And Along Those Stacks, I Have Found Security And Assurance.
Wall
Views
Church
I'm Working At Trying To Be A Christian, And That's Serious Business. It's Like Trying To Be A Good Jew, A Good Muslim, A Good Buddhist, A Good Shintoist, A Good Zoroastrian, A Good Friend, A Good Lover, A Good Mother, A Good Buddy: It's Serious Business.
Christian
Mother
Buddhist
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.
Children
Son
Blessing
Reduce Your Humanity Through What Jules Feiffer Called Little Murders. The Minute I Hear Someone Trying To Demean Me, I Know That That Person Means To Have My Life. And I Will Not Give It To Them. When A Person Commits These Little Murders, And Then You Catch Him Or Her At It, He Or She Might Say, "oh, I Didn't Mean It." But Make No Mistake: It Is An Assassination Attempt.
Mistake
Mean
Giving
I Am Convinced That Most People Do Not Grow Up...we Marry And Dare To Have Children And Call That Growing Up. I Think What We Do Is Mostly Grow Old. We Carry Accumulation Of Years In Our Bodies, And On Our Faces, But Generally Our Real Selves, The Children Inside, Are Innocent And Shy As Magnolias.
Life
Children
Growing Up
Everybody In The World Wants The Same Thing...to Be Needed...a Job That He/she Can Do Well...to Love Somebody...everybody...there's No Mystery.
Jobs
World
Want
I'm Here, And I Do My Best To Be Completely Centered At The Place I'm At, Then I Go Forward To The Next Place.
Next
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.
Men
White Man
Black
Without Courage You Can't Practice Any Other Virtue Consistently.
Courage
Practice
Remember You
I Do Like To Have Guns Around. I Don't Like To Carry Them. But I Like - If Somebody Is Going To Come Into My House And I Have Not Put Out The Welcome Mat, I Want To Stop Them.
Gun
House
Want
The Children To Whom We Read Simple Stories May Or May Not Show Gratitude, But Each Boon We Give Strengthens The Pillars Of The World.
Gratitude
Children
Simple
Glory Falls Around Us As We Sob A Dirge Of Desolation On The Cross
Fall
Glory
Crosses
Intelligence Always Had A Pornographic Influence On Me.
Influence
Achievement Brings Its Own Anticlimax.
Achievement
Putting Down On Paper What You Have To Say Is An Important Part Of Writing, But The Words And Ideas Have To Be Shaped And Cleaned, Cleaned As Severely As A Dog Cleans A Bone, Cleaned Until There's Not A Shred Of Anything Superfluous.
Dog
Writing
Ideas
My Heart Is So Heavy When I See The Reality Of The Indian Reservation And As An American, I Know I Am, Too, Responsible.
Heart
Reality
Responsible
The Best Comfort Food Will Always Be Greens, Cornbread, And Fried Chicken.
Comfort
Chickens
Fried Food
All Of Us Knows, Not What Is Expedient, Not What Is Going To Make Us Popular, Not What The Policy Is, Or The Company Policy - But In Truth Each Of Us Knows What Is The Right Thing To Do. And That's How I Am Guided.
Company
Things To Do
Policy
Some People Cannot See A Good Thing When It Is Right Here, Right Now. Others Can Sense A Good Thing Coming When It Is Days, Months, Or Miles Away.
People
Months
Good Things
It's Hard Because People Think They Have Something To Lose And The Truth Is They Have Everything To Gain In Trying To Love Somebody.
Thinking
People
Trying
If Our Children Are To Approve Of Themselves, They Must See That We Approve Of Ourselves.
Children
Our Children
Ifs
Had I Not Had My Grandmother, Who Dared To Be My Rainbow In The Clouds, I Would Have Been Just Another Sexually Abused Barefoot Black Girl On The Roads Of Arkansas.
Girl
Grandmother
Clouds
Never, Never Let A Person Know You're Frightened. And A Group Of Them ... Absolutely Never. Fear Brings Out The Worst In Everybody.
Groups
Frightened
Worst
Love Recognizes No Barriers.
Love
Barriers
The Hope, The Hope That Lives In The Breast Of The Black American, Is Just So Tremendous That It Overwhelms Me Sometimes.
Black
Sometimes
Breasts
My Pride Had Been Starched By A Family Who Assumed Unlimited Authority In Its Own Affairs.
Family
Pride
Affair
The Sisters And Brothers That You Meet Give You The Materials Which Your Character Uses To Build Itself. It Is Said That Some People Are Born Great, Others Achieve It, Some Have It Thrust Upon Them. In Truth, The Ways In Which Your Character Is Built Have To Do With All Three Of Those. Those Around You, Those You Choose, And Those Who Choose You.
Brother
Character
People
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.
Life Changing
Long
Sides
Love Is Many Things. It Is Varied. One Thing Love Is Not, Is Unsure.
Love Is
One Thing
Unsure
Dr. [martin Luther] King Was A Human Being. He Had A Sense Of Humor Which Was Wonderful.
Kings
Drs
Sense Of Humor
Oh, The Holiness Of Being The Injured Party.
Party
Holiness
Injured
Prepare Yourself So That You Can Be A Rainbow In Somebody Else's Cloud.
Clouds
Rainbow
Shelter Network's Programs And Services Are A Rainbow In The Clouds For Homeless Children And Adults.
Children
Clouds
Rainbow
Now, After Years Of Observation And Enough Courage To Admit What I Have Observed, I Try To Plant Peace If I Do Not Want Discord; To Plant Loyalty And Honesty If I Want To Avoid Betrayal And Lies.
Inspirational
Loyalty
Honesty
When Teachers Or People In Authority Put Me Down Or In One Way Or Another Tried To Make Me Feel Less Than Equal To What They Thought I Should Be - My Mother Was On My Side. It Was Amazing.
Mother
Teacher
People
We Are More Alike Than Unalike.
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