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The Nice Thing About Hope Is That You Can Give It To Someone Else, Someone Who Needs It Even More Than You Do, And You Will Find You Have Not Given Yours Away At All.

-Maya Angelou

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The Nice Thing About

Maya Angelou

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The Nice Thing About Hope Is That You Can Give It To Someone Else, Someone Who Needs It Even More Than You Do, And You Will Find You Have Not Given Yours Away At All.

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The Thorn From The Bush One Has Planted, Nourished And Pruned Pricks More Deeply And Draws More Blood.

Be Courageous, But Not Foolhardy. Walk Proud As You Are.

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

You Never Get Over The Fear Of Writing.

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.

Hoping For The Best, Prepared For The Worst, And Unsurprised By Anything In Between.

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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.

We Write For The Same Reason That We Walk, Talk, Climb Mountains Or Swim The Oceans - Because We Can. We Have Some Impulse Within Us That Makes Us Want To Explain Ourselves To Other Human Beings.

I Admire People Who Dare To Take The Language, English, And Understand It And Understand The Melody.

Life Loves The Person Who Dares To Live It.

I’ve Got A Magic Charm That I Keep Up My Sleeve, I Can Walk The Ocean Floor And Never Have To Breathe.

By No Amount Of Agile Exercising Of A Wistful Imagination Could My Mother Have Been Called Lenient. Generous She Was; Indulgent Never. Kind, Yes, Permissive, Never. In Her World, People She Accepted Paddled Their Own Canoes, Pulled Their Own Weight, Put Their Own Shoulders To Their Own Plows And Pushed Like Hell.

To Describe My Mother Would Be To Write About A Hurricane In Its Perfect Power. Or The Climbing, Falling Colors Of A Rainbow.

Mother Daughter

Whining Lets The Brute Know There's A Victim For Him In The Neighborhood!

She Comprehended The Perversity Of Life, That In The Struggle Lies The Joy.

In All My Work, I Try To Say - 'you May Be Given A Load Of Sour Lemons, Why Not Try To Make A Dozen Lemon Meringue Pies?'

You May Not Control All The Events That Happen To You, But You Can Decide Not To Be Reduced By Them.

If You Are Always Trying To Be Normal You Will Never Know How Amazing You Can Be.

A Leader Sees Greatness In Other People. He Nor She Can Be Much Of A Leader If All She Sees Is Herself.

It's Still Scary Every Time I Go Back To The Past. Each Morning, My Heart Catches. When I Get There, I Remember How The Light Was, Where The Draft Was Coming From, What Odors Were In The Air. When I Write, I Get All The Weeping Out.

I Sustain Myself With The Love Of Family.

In The Fifties, You Have Your Beauty As A Treat. I Thought That Until I Hit The Sixties.in Your Sixties, Life Decides To Reward You With Certain Kinds Of Profound Appreciation, So That People Name Their Children And Schools And Libraries After You! And You Still Have Your Sexuality And Your Sensuality. If You Want Your Sexuality, You Still Have It.

I Was Grateful To See President Obama's Victory Speech. I Was Over The Moon To See The Audience. There Were About 60 Percent White Voters The Other 40 Percent Were African Americans, Asian, Spanish Speaking Etc. I Wept At That Spectacle, It Told Me That The Pundits That Continue In Our Country To Try To Polarize Us, To Keep Us Apart, Are Not Succeeding. Americans Are Waking Up Not Only To The Truth, But The Truth In Each Other. Hallelujah!

The Quality Of Strength Lined With Tenderness Is An Unbeatable Combination, As Are Intelligence And Necessity When Unblunted By Formal Education.

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

For Africa To Me... Is More Than A Glamorous Fact. It Is A Historical Truth. No Man Can Know Where He Is Going Unless He Knows Exactly Where He Has Been And Exactly How He Arrived At His Present Place.

We Need Language To Tell Us Who We Are, How We Feel, What We're Capable Of- To Explain The Pains And Glory Of Our Existence.

The Main Thing In One's Own Private World Is To Try To Laugh As Much As You Cry.

But Still, Like Air, I'll Rise

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.

When You Do Nothing You Feel Overwhelmed And Powerless. But When You Get Involved You Feel The Sense Of Hope And Accomplishment That Comes From Knowing You Are Working To Make Things Better.

You Can't Use Up Creativity, Creative Thinking Builds On Itself And Increases The Creativity Of The Thinker...you Can't Use Up Creativity. The More You Use, The More You Have.

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

I've Learned That Every Day You Should Reach Out And Touch Someone. People Love A Warm Hug, Or Just A Friendly Pat On The Back.

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.

You May Write Me Down In History With Your Bitter, Twisted Lies. You May Trod Me In The Very Dirt, But Still Like Dust, I'll Rise.

Having Courage Does Not Mean That We Are Unafraid. Having Courage And Showing Courage Mean We Face Our Fears. We Are Able To Say, 'i Have Fallen, But I Will Get Up.'

Pretty Women Wonder Where My Secret Lies.

Do Not Be Wedded Forever To Fear, Yoked Eternally To Brutishness.

Its Not Where Your Dreams Take You, Its Where You Take Your Dreams.

Look For The Beauty In Things.

You Can't Really Know Where You Are Going Until You Know Where You Have Been.

Where You Are Going

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

The Intensity With Which Young People Live Demands That They "blank Out" As Often As Possible.

I Never Expected Anyone To Take Care Of Me, But In My Wildest Dreams And Juvenile Yearnings, I Wanted The House With The Picket Fence From June Allyson Movies. I Knew That Was Yearning Like One Yearns To Fly.

Be Wary When A Naked Person Offers You His Shirt

I Have Forgiven Myself; I'll Make A Change. Once That Forgiveness Has Taken Place You Can Console Yourself With The Knowledge That A Diamond Is The Result Of Extreme Pressure. Less Pressure Is Crystal, Less Than That Is Coal, Less Than That Is Fossilized Leaves Or Plain Dirt. Pressure Can Change You Into Something Quite Precious, Quite Wonderful, Quote Beautiful And Extremely Hard.

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.

I've Learned That You Can Tell A Lot About A Person By The Way (s)he Handles These Three Things: A Rainy Day, Lost Luggage, And Tangled Christmas Tree Lights.

All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes.

The World Had Taken A Deep Breath And Was Having Doubts About Continuing To Revolve.

As A Nurse, We Have The Opportunity To Heal The Heart, Mind, Soul And Body Of Our Patients, Their Families And Ourselves. They May Not Remember Your Name But They Will Never Forget The Way You Made Them Feel.

My Mother Is So Full Of Joy And Life. I Am Her Child. And That Is Better Than Being The Child Of Anyone Else In The World.

I Wish That We Could Look Into Each Other's Faces, In Each Other's Eyes, And See Our Own Selves. I Hope That The Children Have Not Been So Scarred By Their Upbringing That They Only Think Fear When They See Someone Else Who Looks Separate From Them.

I Always Felt, If I Can Get To A Library, I'll Be Ok.

Mother's Life Flowed Radiant. Flourescent-tipped Waves On Incoming Tides.

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 Think We All Have Empathy. We May Not Have Enough Courage To Display It.

How Important It Is For Us To Recognize And Celebrate Our Heroes And She-roes!

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

Hold Those Things That Tell Your History And Protect Them. During Slavery, Who Was Able To Read Or Write Or Keep Anything? The Ability To Have Somebody To Tell Your Story To Is So Important. It Says: 'i Was Here. I May Be Sold Tomorrow. But You Know I Was Here.'

There's A World Of Difference Between Truth And Facts. Facts Can Obscure The Truth.

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

I Will Write On The Pages Of History What I Want Them To Say. I Will Be Myself. I Will Speak My Own Name.

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

I Will Look After You And I Will Look After Anybody You Say Needs To Be Looked After, Any Way You Say. I Am Here. I Brought My Whole Self To You. I Am Your Mother.

I Have Risked Everything To Tell The Truth. Tell The Truth

Telling The Truth

Develop Enough Courage So That You Can Stand Up For Yourself And Then Stand Up For Somebody Else.

There Are Great Parents Of Small Children - They Keep Their Little Hair In Bows - But Those Parents Are Not Always Good Parents Of Young Adults. As Soon As Their Children Get Up To Some Size, It's "shut Up, Sit Down, You Talk Too Much, Keep Your Distance, I'll Send You To Europe!" My Mom Was A Terrible Parent Of Small Children But A Great Parent Of Young Adults. She'd Talk To Me As If I Had Some Sense.

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.

If We Live Long Enough, We May Even Get Over War. I Imagine A Time When Somebody Will Mention The Word War And Everyone In The Room Will Start To Laugh. And What Do You Mean War?

...we May Encounter Many Defeats, But We Must Not Be Defeated. That Sounds Goody Two-shoes, I Know, But I Believe That A Diamond Is The Result Of Extreme Pressure And Time. Less Time Is Crystal. Less Than That Is Coal. Less Than That Is Fossilized Leaves. Less Than That It's Just Plain Dirt. In All My Work, In The Movies I Write, The Lyrics The Poetry, The Prose, The Essays, I Am Saying That We May Encounter Many Defeats - Maybe It's Imperative That We Encounter The Defeats - But We Are Much Stronger Than We Appear To Be And Maybe Much Better Than We Allow Ourselves To Be.

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

Love Each Other

The Most Difficult Thing In The World, It Seems To Me, Is To Realize That I Am A Child Of God; To Keep That In My Mind All The Time.

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.

The Idea Of Overcoming Is Always Fascinating To Me. It's Fascinating Because Few Of Us Realize How Much Energy We Have Expended Just To Be Here Today. I Don't Think We Give Ourselves Enough Credit For The Overcoming.

I Believe Talent Is Like Electricity. We Don't Understand Electricity. We Use It. You Can Plug Into It And Light Up A Lamp, Keep A Heart Pump Going, Light A Cathedral, Or You Can Electrocute A Person With It. Electricity Will Do All That. It Makes No Judgment. I Think Talent Is Like That. I Believe Every Person Is Born With Talent.

Without Willing It, I Had Gone From Being Ignorant Of Being Ignorant To Being Aware Of Being Aware. And The Worst Part Of My Awareness Was That I Didn't Know What I Was Aware Of. I Knew I Knew Very Little, But I Was Certain That The Things I Had Yet To Learn Wouldn't Be Taught To Me At George Washington High School.

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.

Fighting For One's Freedom, Struggling Towards Being Free, Is Like Struggling To Be A Poet Or A Good Christian Or A Good Jew Or A Good Muslim Or Good Zen Buddhist. You Work All Day Long And Achieve Some Kind Of Level Of Success By Nightfall, Go To Sleep And Wake Up The Next Morning With The Job Still To Be Done. So You Start All Over Again.

Strong Women- Precious Jewels All- Their Humanness Is Evident In Their Accessibility. We Are Able To Enter Into The Spirit Of These Women And Rejoice In Their Warmth And Courage.

Find A Beautiful Piece Of Art. If You Fall In Love With Van Gogh Or Matisse Or John Oliver Killens, Or If You Fall Love With The Music Of Coltrane, The Music Of Aretha Franklin, Or The Music Of Chopin - Find Some Beautiful Art And Admire It, And Realize That That Was Created By Human Beings Just Like You, No More Human, No Less.

Falling In Love

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.

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.

It Is Important That We Learn Humility, Which Says There Was Someone Else Before Me Who Paid For Me. My Responsibility Is To Prepare Myself So That I Can Pay For Someone Else Who Is Yet To Come.

Wouldn't Take Nothing For My Journey Now.

Inspirational Life

That's What You Want To Do? Then Nothing Beats A Trial But A Failure. Give It Everything You've Got. I've Told You Many Times, 'cant Do Is Like Dont Care.' Neither Of Them Have A Home.

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.

I Want To Write So Well That A Person Is 30 Or 40 Pages In A Book Of Mine ... Before She Realizes She's Reading.

Once You Appreciate One Of Your Blessings, One Of Your Senses, Your Sense Of Hearing, Then You Begin To Respect The Sense Of Seeing And Touching And Tasting, You Learn To Respect All The Senses.

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.

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.

I Am Convinced That Words Are Things, And We Simply Don't Have The Machinery To Measure What They Are. I Believe That Words Are Tangible Things.

The Country Didn't Get That Way In A Week; We've Had Years And Years Of Getting Behind In Our Economy. So President [barack] Obama Stepped Into A Hellhole And People Wanted Him To Change It As Soon As He Came In. But He's Got His Adversaries To Deal With In The House And Senate, So It's Not Easy.

A Single Fantasy Can Transform A Million Realities.

I Want To Be A Good Human Being. I'm Doing My Best, And I'm Working At It.

In A Magazine, One Can Get - From Cover To Cover - 15 To 20 Different Ideas About Life And How To Live It.

Different Ideas

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.

My People Had Used Music To Soothe Slavery's Torment Or To Propitiate God, Or To Describe The Sweetness Of Love And The Distress Of Lovelessness, But I Knew No Race Could Sing And Dance Its Way To Freedom.

My Mother Raised Me, And Then Freed Me.

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.

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

A Wise Woman Wishes To Be No One's Enemy; A Wise Woman Refuses To Be Anyone's Victim.

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.

There Is An Amazing Something In The American Psyche Which Speaks About Courage, And It Says, 'yes I Can,' ... Yes, We Will Overcome It All Because We Have The Spirit To Do So.

Just As Hope Rings Through Laughter, It Can Also Shine Through Tears.

In Stamps The Segregation Was So Complete That Most Black Children Didn't Really, Absolutely Know What Whites Looked Like.

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

Do Not Be Wedded Forever To Fear, Yoked Eternally To Brutishness.

Love Life. Engage In It. Give It All You've Got. Love It With A Passion Because Life Truly Does Give Back, Many Times Over, What You Put Into It.

There's A Place In You That You Must Keep Inviolate. You Must Keep It Pristine. Clean. So That Nobody Has A Right To Curse You Or Treat You Badly. Nobody. No Mother, Father, No Wife, No Husband, No-nobody. You Have To Have A Place Where You Say: 'stop It. Back Up. Don't You Know I'm A Child Of God?

We Really Are 15 Countries, And It's Remarkable That Each Of Us Thinks We Represent The Real America. The Midwesterner In Kansas, The Black American In Durham - Both Are Certain They Are The Real American.

The Truth Is Very Important. No Matter How Negative It Is, It Is Imperative That You Learn The Truth, Not Necessarily The Facts. I Mean, That, That Can Come, But Facts Can Stand In Front Of The Truth And Almost Obscure The Truth. It Is Imperative That Students Learn The Truth Of Our History.

I Have Respect For The Past, But I'm A Person Of The Moment.

Making A Decision To Write Was A Lot Like Deciding To Jump Into A Frozen Lake.

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.

My Entire Stay There [high School] Might Have Been Time Lost If It Hadn't Been For The Unique Personality Of A Brilliant Teacher. Miss Kirwin Was That Rare Educator Who Was In Love With Information. I Will Always Believe That Her Love Of Teaching Came Not So Much From Her Liking For Students But From Her Desire To Make Sure That Some Of The Things She Knew Would Find Repositories So That They Could Be Shared Again.

When I Want To Think About What Would Be The Right Thing To Do, The Fair Thing To Do, The Wise Thing To Do, I Can Just Think Of My Grandmother. I Can Always Hear Her Say, "now Sister, You Know What's Right. Just Do Right!"

I Want To Write So Well That A Person Is 30 Or 40 Pages In A Book Of Mine ... Before She Realizes She's Reading.

If I'm The People's Poet, Then I Ought To Be In People's Hands - And, I Hope, In Their Heart.

Whenever I'm Around Some Who Is Modest, I Think, 'run Like Hell And All Of Fire.' You Don't Want Modesty, You Want Humility.

You Can Only Accomplish What I Really Love. Do Not Take The Money As A Goal. Instead, Pursue The Things You Passionate About, And Do Good To Others Can Not Take My Eyes Off You

Home Is A Refuge Not Only From The World, But A Refuge From My Worries, My Troubles, My Concerns. I Like Beautiful Things Around Me. I Like To Be Beautiful Because It Delights My Eyes And My Soul Is Lifted Up.

Sisterhood Means If You Happen To Be In Burma And I Happen To Be In San Diego And I'm Married To Someone Who Is Very Jealous And You're Married To Somebody Who Is Very Possessive, If You Call Me In The Middle Of The Night, I Have To Come.

It's Very Hard For Adults To Maintain Respect And Romance So That A Love Affair Can Be Sustained Over Years.

As Soon As Healing Takes Place, Go Out And Heal Somebody Else.

I Know, That Since Life Is Our Most Precious Gift, And As Far As We Can Be Absolutely Certain, It's Given To Us To Live But Once, Let Us So Live We Will Not Regret Years Of Useless Virtue, And Inertia, And Timidity, And Ignorance, And In Our Last Moments We Can Say: 'all My Life, All My Conscious Energies, Have Been Dedicated To The Most Noble Cause In The World, The Liberation Of The Human Mind And Spirit - Beginning With My Own'.

The Desire To Reach Hearts Is Wise

I've Had Rainbows In My Clouds.

It May In Fact Be Utterly Impossible To Be Successful Without Helping Others To Become Successful.

Hoping For The Best, Prepared For The Worst, And Unsurprised By Anything In Between.

Personal Growth

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

Don't Bring Negative To My Door.

Information Helps You To See That You're Not Alone. That There's Somebody In Mississippi And Somebody In Tokyo Who Have Wept, Who've All Longed And Lost, Who've All Been Happy. So The Library Helps You To See, Not Only That You Are Not Alone, But That You're Not Really Any Different From Everyone Else.

I Like To Know What's Happening.

No One Comes From The Earth Like Grass. We Come Like Trees. We All Have Roots.

In Order To Be Profoundly Dishonest, A Person Must Have One Of Two Qualities: Either He Is Unscrupulously Ambitious, Or He Is Unswervingly Egocentric.

African American

You Can Only Become Truly Accomplished At Something You Love. Don’t Make Money Your Goal. Instead Pursue The Things You Love Doing And Then Do Them So Well That People Can’t Take Their Eyes Off Of You.

Preach It, I Say Preach It.

Don't Let Anybody Raise You. You've Been Raised.

To Grow Up Is To Stop Putting Blame On Parents.

But A Caged Bird Stands On The Grave Of Dreams.

Creativity Or Talent, Like Electricity, Is Something I Don't Understand But Something I'm Able To Harness And Use.

Freedom Is Never Free.

Poetry Helps My Soul Escape Its Encasement.

Hope For The Best, Be Prepared For The Worse. Life Is Shocking, But You Must Never Appear To Be Shocked. For No Matter How Bad It Is It Could Be Worse And No Matter How Good It Is It Could Be Better.

Hoping For The Best

Naturally, If You Love Somebody, You Do Want To See Their Face Every Now And Again, But That's Not A Condition Of Your Love. People Often Get Possession Mixed Up With Love, And They Say, "if You Really Loved Me, You Would Call Me." How - When Life Is Going On? I Think Of You All The Time, And The Thought Of You Always Lifts My Spirits. But I'm Not Right At The Phone!

Everybody Is Worth Everything.

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.

I Speak A Number Of Languages, But None Are More Beautiful To Me Than English.

Shelter Network's Programs And Services Are A Rainbow In The Clouds For Homeless Children And Adults.

Love Recognizes No Barriers.

The Fact That The Adult American Negro Female Emerges A Formidable Character Is Often Met With Amazement, Distaste And Even Belligerance. It Is Seldom Accepted As An Inevitable Outcome Of The Struggle Won By Survivors, And Deserves Respect If Not Enthusiastic Acceptance.

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

If We Don't Plant The Right Things, We Will Reap The Wrong Things. It Goes Without Saying. And You Don't Have To Be, You Know, A Brilliant Biochemist And You Don't Have To Have An Iq Of 150. Just Common Sense Tells You To Be Kind, Ninny, Fool. Be Kind.

Prepare Yourself So That You Can Be A Rainbow In Somebody Else's Cloud.

I Was Raped When I Was Very Young. I Told My Brother The Name Of The Person Who Had Done It. Within A Few Days The Man Was Killed. In My Child's Mind--seven And A Half Years Old--i Thought My Voice Had Killed Him. So I Stopped Talking For Five Years.

To Those Who Have Given Up On Love: I Say, "trust Life A Little Bit.

If I'm Going To A New Country, I Try To Learn Something About The Language And The Culture, So I Don't Just Go Bumbling Over Things.

What You're Supposed To Do When You Don't Like A Thing Is Change It. If You Can't Change It, Change The Way You Think About It. Don't Complain.

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

Love Is That Condition In The Human Spirit So Profound That It Empowers Us To Develop Courage; To Trust That Courage And Build Bridges With It; To Trust Those Bridges And Cross Over Them So We Can Attempt To Reach Each Other.

Lift Up Your Eyes Upon This Day Breaking For You. Give Birth Again To The Dream. Women, Children, Men, Take It Into The Palms Of Your Hands. Mold It Into The Shape Of Your Most Private Need. Sculpt It Into The Image Of Your Most Public Self. Lift Up Your Hearts Each New Hour Holds New Chances For A New Beginning.

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

Original Thinking Migrates Each Day In Search Of Nourishment.

I Think All Poems Are Commissioned. They Just Come To Me Without Somebody Outside Commissioning Them. The Idea Comes And I Will Live With Them 'til I Get It As Close To What I Mean. I've Never Been Totally Satisfied. I've Come Close A Few Times.

Difficult Is A Far Cry From Impossible. The Distance Between These Two Lies Hope. Hope And Fear Cannot Occupy The Same Space At The Same Time. Invite One To Stay.

I Don't Know How Much Longer I'll Be Around. I'll Probably Be Writing When The Lord Says, 'maya, Maya Angelou, It's Time.'

At One Time, You Could Sit On The Rue De La Paix In Paris Or At The Habima Theater In Tel Aviv Or In Medina And You Could See A Person Come In, Black, White, It Didn't Matter. You Said, 'that's An American' Because There's A Readiness To Smile And To Talk To People.

When I Write, I Tend To Twist My Hair. Something For My Small Mind To Do, I Guess.

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

I Believe That One Can Never Leave Home. I Believe That One Carries The Shadows, The Dreams, The Fears And The Dragons Of Home Under One's Skin, At The Extreme Corners Of One's Eyes And Possibly In The Gristle Of The Earlobe.

You Alone Are Enough. You Have Nothing To Prove To Anybody.

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

Laugh As Often As Possible. You Must. Because The World Will Offer You Every Reason To Weep. So As Often As Possible, You Laugh. That, I Think, Is Part Of The Great Love.

Hate, It Has Caused A Lot Of Problems In The World, But Has Not Solved One Yet.

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

At The End Of The Day People Won't Remember What You Said Or Did, They Will Remember How You Made Them Feel.

The End Of The Day

Alone, All Alone Nobody, But Nobody Can Make It Out Here Alone.

The Needs Of A Society Determine Its Ethics.

Human Beings Love Poetry. They Don't Even Know It Sometimes... Whether They're The Songs Of Bono, Or The Songs Of Justin Bieber... They're Listening To Poetry.

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.

Being A Woman Is Hard Work.

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

My Mother Had Said Me, "all Right, You've Been Raised, So Don't Let Anybody Else Raise You. You Know The Difference Between Right And Wrong. Do Right. And Remember - You Can Always Come Home." And She Continued To Liberate Me Until She Died. On The Night She Died, I Went To The Hospital. I Told My Mom, "let Me Tell You About Yourself. You Deserved A Great Daughter, And You Got One. And You Liberated Me To Be One. So If It's Time For You To Go, You May Have Done Everything God Brought You Here To Do."

Never Whine. Whining Lets A Brute Know That A Victim Is In The Neighborhood.

Women Should Be Tough, Tender, Laugh As Much As Possible, And Live Long Lives.

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.

Ritie, Don't Worry 'cause You Ain't Pretty. Plenty Pretty Women I Seen Digging Ditches Or Worse. You Smart. I Swear To God, I Rather You Have A Good Mind Than A Cute Behind.

Any Book That Helps A Child To Form A Habit Of Reading, To Make Reading One Of His Deep And Continuing Needs, Is Good For Him.

The Poetry You Read Has Been Written For You, Each Of You - Black, White, Hispanic, Man, Woman, Gay, Straight.

Only Equals Make Friends, Every Other Relationship Is Contrived And Off Balance.

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!

Have Enough Courage To Love.

Courage To Love

Most Plain Girls Are Virtuous Because Of The Scarcity Of Opportunity To Be Otherwise.

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

It Is A No-fail, Incontrovertible Reality: If You Get, Give. If You Learn, Teach. You Can't Do Anything With That Except Do It.

I Not Only Have The Right To Stand Up For Myself, But I Have The Responsibility. I Can't Ask Somebody Else To Stand Up For Me If I Won't Stand Up For Myself. And Once You Stand Up For Yourself, You'd Be Surprised That People Say, "can I Be Of Help?".

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.

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