Maya Angelou Quotes

Women are never so strong as after their defeat.

I did get knocked down flat in front of the whole world, and I rose. I didn't run away - I rose right where I'd been knocked down. And then that's how you get to know yourself. You say, hmm, I can get up!

Paule Marshall does not let the black women in her fiction lose. While they lose friends, lovers, husbands, homes, or jobs, they always find themselves.

You find strength in your moments of weakness.

We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. It may even be necessary to encounter the defeat, so that we can know who we are.

I wish I'd known from the beginning that I was born a strong woman. What a difference it would have made! I wish I'd known that I was born a courageous woman; I've spent so much of my life cowering. How many conversations would I not only have started but finished if I had known I possessed a warrior's heart? I wish I'd known that I'd be born to take on the world; I wouldn't have run from it for so long, but run to it with open arms.

Courage is what you earn when you've been through the tough times and you discover they aren't so tough after all.

Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.

When you finally understand who you are, ages 6 through 60 will understand who you are. Because when they see a person that's come through all that I've come through, still standing, it's amazing.

The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.

Don't let your wounds make you become someone you're not.

Someone said adversity builds character, but someone else said adversity reveals character. I'm pleasantly surprised with my resilience. I persevere, and not just blindly. I take the best, get rid of the rest, and move on, realizing that you can make a choice to take the good.

I learned patience, perseverance, and dedication. Now I really know myself, and I know my voice. It's a voice of pain and victory.

You don't have to fear defeat if you believe it may reveal powers that you didn't know you possessed.

Always continue the climb. It is possible for you to do whatever you choose, if you first get to know who you are and are willing to work with a power that is greater than ourselves to do it.

Sometimes the future that you imagined to be the most dreadful, turns out to be the future that compels you to reach down very deeply into your being to uncover reservoirs of strength and perserverance that you had no idea were there.

Growing up, when I was younger, I didn't feel all that tough or smart or strong. As I got older, I was able to discover my own strength.

I'm going to talk about my struggles and come-up.

I admit that when challenging times first surface, it's not first instinct to do a happy dance. But when you take time to pause and add insight to injury, you will immediately start to feel empowered to make those majorly needed life shifts.

I feel like I am a better person because of my struggles, because of my challenges and persevering through them and realizing the mistakes that I've made, correcting them.

I faced a certain amount of violence. It taught me that I had to learn to protect myself - and it made me stronger. It could have made me step backwards with my self-discovery. Instead, it pushed me further.

What I'm learning about myself is, no matter what the challenge is, I can overcome it.

I had to do so much self-searching and self-work and learning how to navigate in a world that seemed very mean.

In my most painful moments on the bike, I am at my most curious and I wonder each and every time how I will respond.

Once I've learned all those things and gotten through the hard times, I come out feeling really powerful.