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Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Ann Johnson on April 4, 1928) is an American poet, memoirist, actress and an important figure in the American Civil Rights Movement.
She has been called "America's most visible black female autobiographer". Angelou is known for her series of six autobiographies, starting with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, (1969) which was nominated for a National Book Award. Her volume of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Diiie (1971) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Angelou recited her poem, "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Bill Clinton's. She has been highly honored for her body of work, including being awarded over 30 honorary degrees.
ON THE PULSE OF MORNING
Maya Angelou
-- Maya Angelou
***
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.
***
Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
***
Courage allows the successful woman to fail-
and learn powerful lessons-
from the failure-
so that in the end,
she didn't fail at all.
***
Courage
is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you
can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any
virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.
***
Don't
make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and do
them so well that people can't take their eyes off you. All the other
tangible rewards will come as a result.
Each
of us has the right and the responsibility to asses the road which lie
ahead and those over which we have traveled, and if the feature road
looms ominous or unpromising, and the road back uninviting-inviting,
then we need to gather our resolve and carrying only the necessary
baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice
is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change
that one as well.
***
Each of us has that
right, that possibility, to invent ourselves daily. If a person does
not invent herself, she will be invented. So, to be bodacious enough to
invent ourselves is wise.
***
Education helps one case cease being intimidated by strange situations.
***
I believe that every person is born with talent.
***
I can be changed by what happens to me. but I refuse to be reduced by it.
***
I
don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I
learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very
important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because
if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do
and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'well, if
I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to
people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you
say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we
can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake
between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of
being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real
forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are
so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger
society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too
white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual,
that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to
overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never
grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.
***
I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.
***
If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.
-- Maya Angelou
