Quotes by Maya Angelou

“To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power.”

“We only have One Mom, One Mommy, One Mother in this World, One life. Dont wait for the Tomorrows to tell Mom, you love her.”

“A mothers arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them.”

“The future destiny of a child is always the work of the mother.”

“A mother had a slender, small body, but a large heart - a heart so large that everybodys grief and everybodys joy found welcome in it, and hospitable accommodation.”

“Why are people so tired on April 1st? Because they just finished a 31-day March”

“Mama was my greatest teacher, a teacher of compassion, love and fearlessness. If love is sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love.”

“The thorn from the bush one has planted, nourished and pruned pricks more deeply and draws more blood.”

“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.”

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”

“The honorary duty of a human being is to love.”

“We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you cant practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.”

“If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.”

“When we cast our bread upon the waters, we can presume that someone downstream whose face we will never know will benefit from our action, as we who are downstream from another will profit from that grantors gift”

“There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.”

“In todays 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.”

“Theres a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.”

“In all my work what I try to say is that as human beings we are more alike than we are unalike.”

“One must know not just how to accept a gift, but with what grace to share it.”