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You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. Please remember that your difficulties do not define you. They simply strengthen your ability to overcome.

Maya Angelou

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Maya Angelou
Age: 86 †
Born: 1928
Born: April 4
Died: 2014
Died: May 28
Author
Autobiographer
Comedian
Dancer
Essayist
Film Director
Film Producer
Human Rights Activist
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Politician
St. Louis
Missouri
Marguerite Annie Johnson
Marguerite Johnson
Marguerite Ann Johnson
Marguerite Anne Johnson
May
Overcoming
Defeats
Many
Defeat
Strengthen
Must
Difficulty
Encounter
Motivational
Difficulties
Please
Defeated
Simply
Encounters
Ability
Define
Remember
Overcome

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Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.
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I have heard it said that winter, too, will pass, that spring is a sign that summer is due at last. See, all we have to do is hang on.
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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.
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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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I made the decision to quit show business. Give up the skintight dresses and manicured smiles. The false concern over sentimental lyrics. I would never again work to make people smile inanely and would take on the responsibility of making them think.
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Black women have not historically stood in the pulpit, but that doesn't undermine the fact that they built the churches and maintain the pulpits.
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I agreed a long time ago, I would not live at any cost. If I am moved or forced away from what I think is the right thing, I will not do it.
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I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.
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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.
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This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I had to trust life and believe that life loved the person who dared to live it.
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Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn't be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.
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Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it allows me to survive, and better than that, to thrive with passion, compassion, and style.
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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?'
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Your life is much more important that you can imagine... it is your first treasure.
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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?
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