If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?
Maya AngelouRead
We, unaccustomed to courage_x000D_ _x000D_ exiles from delight_x000D_ _x000D_ live coiled in shells of loneliness_x000D_ _x000D_ until love leaves its high holy temple_x000D_ _x000D_ and comes into our sight_x000D_ _x000D_ to liberate us into life.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses how love can free individuals from loneliness and lead them to a more fulfilling life.
Maya Angelou's quote highlights the transformative power of love, portraying it as a force that liberates individuals from their self-imposed isolation. The imagery of being coiled in shells of loneliness suggests that many people are accustomed to avoiding vulnerability and connection. However, when love reveals itself, it breaks through the barriers that keep us isolated and allows us to truly engage with life and each other, signifying that love is both a profound revelation and a means to true existence.
Themes
LoveLonelinessLiberationCourageLife
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a wedding to emphasize the importance of love in overcoming challenges.
More from Maya Angelou
All quotes →I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at commensurate speed.
Maya AngelouRead
The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn't need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder-in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.
Maya AngelouRead
I dreamt we walked together along the shore. We made satisfying small talk and laughed. This morning I found sand in my shoe and a seashell in my pocket. Was I only dreaming?
Maya AngelouRead
I know that I'm not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don't know how not to.
Maya AngelouRead
I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people - one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion's den. You can't just play around with all those big cats - you've got to take somebody on.
Maya AngelouRead
Similar quotes
Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.
Gustave FlaubertRead
Gentle lady, do not sing Sad songs about the end of love; Lay aside sadness and sing How love that passes is enough. Sing about the long deep sleep Of lovers that are dead, and how In the grave all love shall sleep: Love is aweary now.
James JoyceRead
My effort here is to help you to feel that existence is not indifferent towards you. It is deeply concerned about you, it cares for you, it loves you. and when one feels loved and cared for, one is capable of loving and caring. when existence pours its love into you, you start sharing your love with others. You become so burdened with love that you have to share. You cannot contain it, it is uncontainable. It starts spreading, radiating.
RajneeshRead
The other one he loved like a slave, like a madman and like a beggar. Why? Ask the dust on the road and the falling leaves, ask the mysterious God of life; for no one knows such things. She gave him nothing, no nothing did she give him and yet he thanked her. She said: Give me your peace and your reason! And he was only sorry she did not ask for his life.
Knut HamsunRead
If you love, you will suffer. The only way to protect yourself against suffering is to protect yourself against love - and that is the greatest suffering of all, loneliness.
Peter KreeftRead
Another argument, vaguer and even less persuasive, is that gay marriage somehow does harm to heterosexual marriage. I have yet to meet anyone who can explain to me what this means. In what way would allowing same-sex partners to marry diminish the marriages of heterosexual couples?
Ted OlsonRead