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Today I’m featuring some Maya Angelou quotes. For those of you who did not know, Maya Angelou is an American author and poet. She was born in 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri in the USA.

She has published six autobiographies, five books of essays, numerous books of poetry, and is credited with a long list of plays, movies, and television shows. She is one of the most decorated writers of her generation. She’s also won dozens of awards and has received over thirty honorary doctoral degrees.

Maya Angelou inspires me to improve my skills as a wordsmith, blogger, writer and person. Nuff said. This lady might be over 83 years old, but she’s definitely not an idiot.

Here are some quotes from Maya Angelou to inspire you:

1. “Achievement brings its own anticlimax.”

2. “All great achievements require time.”

3. “Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”

4. “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.”

5. “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

6. “I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.”

7. “I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.”

8. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

9. “If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.”

10. “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”

11. “Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: “I’m with you kid. Let’s go.”

12. “Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.”

13. “Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”

14. “My life has been one great big joke, a dance that’s walked a song that’s spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.”

15. “Nothing will work unless you do.”

16. “Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.”

17. “Some critics will write ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.”

18. “The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.”

19. “There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.”

20. “There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.”

21. “We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”

22. “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

23. “Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.”

24. “I can be changed by what happens to me. but I refuse to be reduced by it.”

25. “When it looked like the sun wasn’t going to shine any more, there’s a rainbow in the clouds.”

26. “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.”

27. “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”

28. “There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.”

29. “I believe the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare.”

There you have it, some words of inspiration from Maya Angelou. I hope this inspires you to achieve greater things in life. Maybe one of you will read one of these quotes and end writing one of the best books of the 21st Century, or maybe one of you gets so inspired that you find the cure for cancer or AIDS. Who knows? Life is full of endless possibilities.

Watch this space for regular updates in the Quotes category on Running Wolf’s Rant.