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92ebe14
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People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.
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poverty
wealth
religion
god
i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings
maya-angelou
belief
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Maya Angelou |
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c61fdab
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I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss
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youth
life
wisdom
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Maya Angelou |
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58895b7
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A certain person wondered why a big strong girl like me wouldn't keep a job which paid a normal salary. I took my time to lead her and to read her every page. Even minimal people can't survive on minimal wage. A certain person wondered why I wait all week for you. I didn't have the words to describe just what you do. I said you had the motion of the ocean in your walk, and when you solve my riddles you don't even have to talk.
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poetry
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Maya Angelou |
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dabca87
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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.
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inspirational
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Maya Angelou |
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d0e56f2
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Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise
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Maya Angelou |
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e5f6d6d
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In all the institutions I try to be present and accountable for all I do and leave undone. I know that eventually I shall have to be present and accountable n the presence of God. I do not wish to be found wanting.
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Maya Angelou |
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d30a251
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The intensity with which young people live demands that they "blank out" as often as possible."
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Maya Angelou |
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8ea5085
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I will look after you and I will look after anybody you say needs to be looked after, any way you say. I am here. I brought my whole self to you. I am your mother.
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Maya Angelou |
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95e9e99
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He was a simple man who had no inferiority complex about his lack of education, and even more amazing no superiority complex because he had succeeded despite that lack.
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inferiority-complex
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Maya Angelou |
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76d200d
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The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they ha..
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racism
i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings
maya-angelou
perspective
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Maya Angelou |
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7c9e6af
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There are some nights when sleep plays coy, aloof and disdainful. And all the wiles that I employ to win its service to my side
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Maya Angelou |
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11a57a4
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You see, baby, you have to protect yourself. If you don't protect yourself, you look like a fool asking somebody else to protect you." I thought about that for a second. She was right. A woman needs to support herself before she asks anyone else to support her."
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Maya Angelou |
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cffc877
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To grow up is to stop putting blame on parents
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Maya Angelou |
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0a5a9ff
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It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.
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Maya Angelou |
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f22b758
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I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.
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strength-of-character
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Maya Angelou |
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45ebf7a
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Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence--neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish--it is an imponderably valuable gift.
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time
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Maya Angelou |
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25effb7
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Sister, there are people who went to sleep all over the world last night, poor and rich and white and black, but they will never wake again. Sister, those who expected to rise did not, their beds became their cooling boards, and their blankets became their winding sheets. And those dead folks would give anything, anything at all for just five minutes of this weather or ten minutes of that plowing that person was grumbling about. So you watc..
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gratefulness
complaining
whining
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Maya Angelou |
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fc38d5d
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You dwell in whitened castles with deep and poisoned moats
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Maya Angelou |
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96f44de
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Thomas Wolfe warned in the title of America's great novel that 'You Can't Go Home Again.' I enjoyed the book but I never agreed with the title. I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and dragons of home under one's skin, at the extreme corners of one's eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe. Home is that youthful region where a child is the only real living inhabitant...
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inspirational
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Maya Angelou |
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9fb2f40
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remember this: When you cross my doorstep, you have already been raised. With what you have learned...you know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. Don't anybody raise you from the way you have been raised. Know you will have to make adaptations, in love, in relationships, in friends, in society, in work, but don't let anybody change your mind.
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life-lessons
mother
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Maya Angelou |
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749263f
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You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I'll rise.
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Maya Angelou |
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5955e5e
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As I ate she began the first of what we later called "my lessons in living." She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors. She encouraged me to listen carefully to what country people called mother wit. That in those homely sayings was couched the collective wisdom of generations." --
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Maya Angelou |
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b4695a5
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The dread of futility has been my life-long plague.
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Maya Angelou |
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1fccb8c
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I had read a Tale of Two Cities and found it up to my standards as a romantic novel. She opened the first page and I heard poetry for the first time in my life...her voice slid in and curved down trough and over the words. She was nearly singing.
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Maya Angelou |
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085bbfe
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Can't Do is like Don't Care. Neither of them have a home.
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Maya Angelou |
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1ff7ef8
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I couldn't tell fact from fiction, Or if the dream was true My only sure prediction
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poetry
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Maya Angelou (Author) |
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e2f1990
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Go," she whispered. "Go. Show them you spell your name W-O-M-A-N."
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inspirational
our-shared-shelf
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Maya Angelou |
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baad5fd
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See, you don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.
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Maya Angelou |
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d11ee15
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Oh, Black known and unknown poets, how often have your auctioned pains sustained us? Who will compute the lonely nights made less lonely by your songs, or by the empty pots made less tragic by your tales? If we were a people much given to revealing secrets, we might raise monuments and sacrifice to the memories of our poets, but slavery cured us of that weakness.
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Maya Angelou |
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62ebb0c
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Soft you day, be velvet soft, My true love approaches, Look you bright, you dusty sun, Array your golden coaches. Soft you wind, be soft as silk My true love is speaking. Hold you birds, your silver throats, His golden voice I'm seeking. Come you death, in haste, do come My shroud of black be weaving, Quiet my heart, be deathly quiet, My true love is leaving.
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poetry
maya-angelou
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Maya Angelou |
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7784f20
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I really saw clearly, and for the first time, why a mother is really important. Not just because she feeds and also loves and cuddles and even mollycoddles a child, but because in an interesting and maybe an eerie and unworldly way, she stands in the gap. She stands between the unknown and the known.
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Maya Angelou |
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d9a13ed
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I am never proud to participate in violence, yet, I know that each of us must care enough for ourselves, that we can be ready and able to come to our own defense when and wherever needed.
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Maya Angelou |
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b783da6
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I walk into a room Just as cool as you please, And to a man, The fellows stand or Fall down on their knees.
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Maya Angelou |
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73ff51e
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I am convinced that most people do not grow up. We find parking spaces and honor our credit cards. We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias. We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourse..
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Maya Angelou |
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bb75783
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We are missing Michael. But we do know we had him, and we are the world.
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Maya Angelou |
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0b5f76e
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Glory falls around us as we sob a dirge of desolation on the Cross
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dirge
glory
jack-goldenberg
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Maya Angelou |
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b38a97e
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Imagine, I might really become somebody. Someday.
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Maya Angelou |
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feb9b3c
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He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.
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Maya Angelou |
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c46d174
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In the flush of love's light we dare be brave And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be.
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pain
poetry
freedom
fear
life
love
lonliness
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Maya Angelou |
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5b97a6f
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One person, with good purpose, can, constitute the majority.
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Maya Angelou |
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f9f70b8
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One morning as I was leaving, the director said I didn't have to leave the set anymore. What happened? Why did they change their ways of treating me? I came to the realization that it was because I had a mother. My mother spoke highly of me, and to me. But more important, whether they met her or simply heard about her, she was there with me. She had my back, supported me. This is the role of the mother, and in that visit I really saw clearl..
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mothers-and-daughters
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Maya Angelou |
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eb33143
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You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? 'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling do..
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Maya Angelou |
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efb107a
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Independence is a heady draft, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.
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Maya Angelou |
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3674bd0
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My mother raised me, and then freed me,
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Maya Angelou |