African
American
Poet,
Actress, and
Author
(April 4,
1928 - )
"All great achievements require time."
"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song."
"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."
"Education helps one cease being intimidated by strange situations."
"A family is a living thing much like a garden. Effort must be made to understand it. Care must be given in tending it. Then it grows lush and provides nourishment for both the body and the soul."
"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again."
"I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver."
"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."
"The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart."
"If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded."
"Life loves the liver of it."
"My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return."
"Nothing will work unless you do."
"Some seem better prepared to step off one road onto another more promising one. The courage to act depends upon the strength one has gathered, the dares one has dared, and sometimes because one was loved."
"Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it."
"We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty."
"We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated."
"The woman who truly intends to live a good life is already living phenomenally, since intent is a part of the achievement."
