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I believe that people want the scent of love, more than anything else. And I don't mean sentimentality, I don't mean mush. I mean that idea, that human beings are more alike than we are different. And that means that I can love you. I don't mean support you in bad things you do, that I can understand because you're a human being.

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
Human
Beings
Humans
Support
Mean
Idea
Different
Understand
Believe
Means
Mush
Things
Else
Sentimentality
Love
Anything
Scent
People
Ideas
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More quotes by Maya Angelou

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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.
Maya Angelou
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I'm sorry to say that when some people get to age 50, they say, Well, that's the end, I'll never have to do sex again. They lay down first and get up last! But in your sixties, everything is sweeter. You have more time.
Maya Angelou
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To those who are given much, much is expected.
Maya Angelou
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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.
Maya Angelou
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I know that I'm not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don't know how not to.
Maya Angelou
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During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not.
Maya Angelou
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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.
Maya Angelou
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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.
Maya Angelou
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I think that that's the wisest thing - to prevent illness before we try to cure something.
Maya Angelou
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In order to be profoundly dishonest, a person must have one of two qualities: either he is unscrupulously ambitious, or he is unswervingly egocentric.
Maya Angelou
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Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.
Maya Angelou
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I'm considered wise, and sometimes I see myself as knowing. Most of the time, I see myself as wanting to know. And I see myself as a very interested person. I've never been bored in my life.
Maya Angelou
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Open your eyes to the beauty around you, open your mind to the wonders of life, open your heart to those who love you, and always be true to yourself.
Maya Angelou
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That knowledge humbles me, melts my bones, closes my ears, and makes my teeth rock loosely in their gums. And it also liberates me. I am a big bird winging over high mountains, down into serene valleys. I am ripples of waves on silver seas. I'm a spring leaf trembling in anticipation.
Maya Angelou
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I would ask every man and every woman who's had the blessing of having children, 'Would you deny your son or your daughter the ecstasy of finding someone to love?' To love someone takes a lot of courage. So how much more is one challenged when the love is of the same sex and the laws say, 'I forbid you from loving this person'?
Maya Angelou
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Just as hope rings through laughter, it can also shine through tears.
Maya Angelou
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Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother.
Maya Angelou
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In a world so rife with vulgarity, with brutality and violence, love exists. I’m grateful to know that it exists.
Maya Angelou
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Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art.
Maya Angelou
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Have enough courage to love.
Maya Angelou