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I love wisdom. And you can never be great at anything unless you love it. Not be in love with it, but love the thing, admire the thing. And it seems that if you love the thing, and you don't just want to possess it, it will find you.

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
Wisdom
Seems
Anything
Find
Great
Thing
Possess
Never
Admire
Love
Unless

More quotes by Maya Angelou

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Don't trust people who don't laugh. I don't.
Maya Angelou
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All great acheivements require time.
Maya Angelou
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To know and not to do is in fact not to know. We need to be active instruments against evil. We need to do.
Maya Angelou
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I've tried to be totally present, so that when I'm finished with a piece of work, I'm finished. ... The work, once completed, does not need me. The work I'm working on needs my total concentration. The one that's finished doesn't belong to me anymore. It belongs to itself.
Maya Angelou
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Inscribed on the temple of Apollo
Maya Angelou
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Listen to some good poetry. You see? It keeps us from thinking we are only what our blatant appetites describe us as.
Maya Angelou
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You have to deal with what you encounter. But you must not be reduced. And so a way not to be reduced is don't whine! Don't let the incidents which take place in life bring you low.
Maya Angelou
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If the door has been opened and I've been invited, or if I'm not invited and I somehow know I'm supposed to go in there, I put myself together and go in, praying all the while. I try to learn something before I go in. I try to show some respect of the place I'm going into.
Maya Angelou
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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
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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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Give yourself time just to be with yourself.
Maya Angelou
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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
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When we decide to be happy we accept the responsibility to bring happiness to someone else. Some decide that happiness and glee are the same thing, they are not. When we choose happiness we accept the responsibility to lighten the load of someone else and to be a light on the path to another who may be walking in darkness.
Maya Angelou
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Pretty Women Wonder Where My Secret Lies, Im Not Cute Or Built To Fit A Fashion Models Size.
Maya Angelou
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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
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There's something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.
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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In diversity there is beauty and there is strength.
Maya Angelou
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I'm convinced that I'm a child of God. That's wonderful, exhilarating, liberating, full of promise. But the burden which goes along with that is, I'm convinced that everybody is a child of God. . . . I weep a lot. I thank God I laugh a lot, too. The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.
Maya Angelou
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You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.
Maya Angelou