Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. The best time to plant a tree is twenty-five years ago. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them. Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well. Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. If you are at peace you are living in the present. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are depressed you are living in the past. Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass… It’s about learning to dance in the rain. Live today, for tomorrow it will all be history. Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from. Henry David Thoreau “īe always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. And then quietly, without you ever really noticing, someday is today. One day, you’re 17 and you’re planning for someday. If you do what you need, you’re surviving. Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it. The other is as though everything is a miracle. There are only two ways to live your life. So keep your head high, keep your chin up, and most importantly, keep smiling, because life’s a beautiful thing and there’s so much to smile about. Calamity and death happen as well to those who hide from life as to those who squeeze every drop of zest from it. Live your life to the fullest, unfettered by fear of the ghosts and goblins of what might occur. Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you’re alive, it isn’t. It’s when you burn a slow fire and save fuel, that life’s not worth having. When it is rushing through you, destroying you, life is gorgeous, glorious. Life is beautiful, as long as it consumes you. Søren Kierkegaard “īeware the barrenness of a busy life. Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards. Do things without always knowing how they’ll turn out. And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they are doing. She was also a journalist who worked in Africa, a historian, songwriter, dancer, stage and screen producer, director, performer and singer.Take wrong turns. We know her well as a memoirist, essayist and poet, who authored several books of poetry, three books of essays, and a list of plays, movies, and television shows. The famed author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), the first of her seven autobiographies for which she became known, lived a long and storied life.
RELATED: Why Maya Angelou Stopped Speaking – and How She Found a Voice that Changed the World Her lifetime of achievement was rewarded in 2000 when she received the National Medal of Arts, and in 2010 President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the country’s highest honors. In 1993, she was invited to recite her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at Bill Clinton’s inauguration, making her the first poet since 1961 to deliver an inaugural recitation. Maya Angelou was one of America’s most beloved and celebrated poets and authors, with dozens of awards and over 50 honorary degrees attesting to her inspirational role at the center of American life.