Quotes from Maya Angelou

You may trode me in the very dirt. But still, like dust, I'll rise.

When rain comes finally, washing away a low sky of muddy ocher, we who could not control the phenomenon are pressed into relief. The near-occult feeling: The face of being witness to the end of the world gives way to tangible things. Even if the succeeding sensations are not common, they are at least not mysterious.

I did know some people who would receive me, but reluctantly, because I had nothing to offer company save a long face and a self-pitying heart, and I had no intention of changing either. Black Americans of my generation didn't look kindly on public mournings except during or immediately after funerals. We were expected by others and by ourselves to lighten the burden by smiling, to deflect possible new assaults by laughter. Hadn't it worked for us for centuries? Hadn't it?

Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs?

The images had been provided by movies, books and Pathe News, and none included a six-foot tall Black woman hovering either in the back or in the foreground.

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.

I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.

If someone shows you the first time who they are, believe them.

Sua avó diz que você lê muito. Em todas as oportunidades que tem. Isso é bom, mas não o suficiente. Palavras significam mais do que é colocado no papel. É preciso a voz humana para dar a elas as nuances do significado mais profundo.

Southern themes will range from generous and luscious love to cruel and bitter hate, but no one can ever claim that the South is petty or indifferent.

If it is true that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, isn't it also true a society is only as healthy as its sickest citizen and only as wealthy as its most deprived?

Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well. She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima. The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, 'Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.

I'm startled or at least taken aback when people walk up to me and without being questioned inform me that they are Christians. My first response is the question Already? It seems to me that becoming a Christian is a lifelong endeavor.

sometimes you have to defend yourself from yourself." When

tell the truth to yourself first, and to the children.

Se crescer é doloroso para a garota negra do sul, estar ciente do seu não pertencimento é a ferrugem na navalha que ameaça a garganta. É um insulto desnecessário.

The city became for me the ideal of what I wanted to be as a grownup. Friendly but never gushing, cool but not frigid or distant, distinguished without the awful stiffness.

The Black child must learn early to allow laughter to fill his mouth or the million small cruelties he encounters will congeal and clog his throat.

You are too good a woman to think small.

Black people rarely forgave whites for being ragged, unkempt and uncaring. There was a saying which explained the disapproval: 'You been white all your life. Ain't got no further along than this? What ails you?

The variety of our skin tones can confuse, bemuse, delight, brown and pink and beige and purple, tan and blue and white. I

On my way out of the house one morning she said, "Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait." Another time she reminded me that "God helps those who help themselves.

I had a lot of clouds, but I have had so many rainbows.

trembled. I wanted to throw a handful of black pepper in their faces, to throw lye on them, to scream that they were dirty, scummy peckerwoods, but I knew I was as clearly imprisoned behind the scene as the actors outside were confined to their roles.