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To be human is to be challenged to be more divine. Not even to try to meet such a challenge is the biggest defeat imaginable.
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
Even
Defeat
Trying
Biggest
Challenge
Meet
Divine
Challenges
Human
Imaginable
Humans
Challenged
More quotes by Maya Angelou
In order to win, we pay with energy and effort and discipline. If we lose, we pay in disappointment, discontent, and lack of fulfillment.
Maya Angelou
You don't want modesty, you want humility. Humility comes from inside out. It says someone was here before me and I'm here because I've been paid for. I have something to do and I will do that because I'm paying for someone else who has yet to come.
Maya Angelou
You can't get too high for somebody to bring you down.
Maya Angelou
In a long meter hymn, a singer - they call it 'lays out a line.' And then the whole church joins in in repeating that line. And they form a wall of harmony so tight, you can't wedge a pin between it.
Maya Angelou
Inscribed on the temple of Apollo
Maya Angelou
It is better to control oneself, if one can, and not hit back. But on certain occasions, it is imperative to defend oneself. I don't think it's fair to ask anybody not to defend herself or himself.
Maya Angelou
Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you're the funniest person you've ever heard of.
Maya Angelou
One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping.
Maya Angelou
I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings.
Maya Angelou
Its not where your dreams take you, its where you take your dreams.
Maya Angelou
I'm really saddened by the attempts to separate and polarize. This is a time when we have hungry people, people out of work, and people out of spirit. This is a time where we need to uplift, not to separate.
Maya Angelou
I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. So at this wonderful, young age of 65, I don't know yet what the Lord has for me to do. I try to live up to the energy and to the calling, but I wouldn't dare say I have even scratched the surface yet.
Maya Angelou
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?
Maya Angelou
Love builds up the broken wall and straightens the crooked path. Love keeps the stars in the firmament and imposes rhythm on the ocean tides. Each of us is created of it and I suspect each of us was created for it.
Maya Angelou
I encourage courtesy. To accept nothing less than courtesy, and to give nothing less than courtesy. If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.
Maya Angelou
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.
Maya Angelou
I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.
Maya Angelou
Intelligence is a separate gift, for the benefit of students, so that they may think of themselves as intellectual and not very intelligent, or intelligent and not very intellectual. One hopes, of course, that they try to bring the two virtues, the two elements, into their lives at the same time.
Maya Angelou
Just like moons and suns, With certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise.
Maya Angelou
Modesty is a learned affectation. It's no good. Humility is great, because humility says, 'There was someone before me. I'm following in somebody's footsteps.'
Maya Angelou
