Maya Angelou Quotes

Try to live your life in a way that you will not regret years of useless virtue and inertia and timidity.

The saying is, life is short, but what if it's not? But if life is short, is this how you would like to spend your last days? And if life is long, is this how you want to spend 50, 60, or 70 years? Being ashamed? Being quiet? Hoping no one notices you? Not telling the truth? Walking around heavy? If I die in my sleep tonight, God forbid, I am happy with how I've lived my life. I've lived it truthfully.

Grandeur of character lies wholly in force of soul, that is, in the force of thought, moral principle, and love, and this may be found in the humblest condition of life.

Moral courage is higher and a rarer virtue than physical courage.

What is character? It is that quality of man which is going to make a man, in an hour of strain, do the just and, if possible, the generous thing.

Heroes are those who can somehow resist the power of the situation and act out of noble motives, or behave in ways that do not demean others when they easily can.

No one can harm the man who does himself no wrong.

Virtue is a positive quality developed by taking a firm stand for the right in temptation, or by the suffering endured in consequence of wrongdoing.

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.

To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage, or of principle.

True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.

The greatest want of the world is the want of men - men who will not be bought or sold; men who in their inmost souls are true and honest; men who do not fear to call sin by its right name; men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole; men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall.

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public men.

The greatest man is he who chooses the Right with invincible resolution, who resists the sorest temptations from within and without, who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully, who is calmest in storms and most fearless under menace and frowns, whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is most unfaltering. I believe this greatness to be most common among the multitude, whose names are never heard.

I'm simply saying that heroes are people whose activities, whose attitudes, and whose judgment you just think, 'Wow. That's good. That's right. That's real.'

I have a clean conscience and ideals that I am willing to defend.

Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men

Feare nothing but sinne.

One cannot always be a hero, but one can always be a man.

Without courage there cannot be truth, and without truth there can be no other virtue.

One has to spend many years in learning how to be happy.

The definition of success to me is not necessarily a price tag, not fame, but having a good life, and being able to say I did the right thing at the end of the day. Of course, the price tag is definitely part of it, but it's not the whole thing in my book.

Life is meant to be fun, and joyous, and fulfilling.

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.