If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?
Maya AngelouRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Courage enables the consistent practice of virtues in life.
Maya Angelou highlights the foundational importance of courage among all virtues. She suggests that without the strength and bravery that courage provides, one cannot uphold or consistently practice other virtues such as honesty, kindness, or integrity, as they often require facing challenges and fears.
Themes
CourageVirtueStrengthBraveryIntegrity
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about personal growth, one could use this quote to emphasize the necessity of courage in achieving one's goals.
More from Maya Angelou
All quotes βI 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
When there are no avenues of escape or one is caught even before any attempt to escape can be made, then for the first time the use of self-defense techniques should be considered. Even at times like these, do not show any intention of attacking, but first let the attacker become careless. At that time attack him concentrating one's whole strength in one blow to a vital point and in the moment of surprise, escape and seek shelter and help.
Gichin FunakoshiRead
If I take a bump or bruise along the way, that's nothing compared to the sacrifices that the women whose shoulders I stand upon made along the way.
Valerie JarrettRead
Courage is the most important attribute of a lawyer. It is more important than competence or vision. It can never be an elective in any law school. It can never be de-limited, dated or outworn, and it should pervade the heart, the halls of justice and the chambers of the mind.
Robert KennedyRead
I came to believe it not true that "the coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man only one." I think it is the other way around: It is the brave who die a thousand deaths. For it is imagination, and not just conscience, which doth make cowards of us all. Those who do not know fear are not truly brave.
Leo RostenRead
In battle, if you you make your opponent flinch, you have already won.
Miyamoto MusashiRead
I am kind; I am humane. I open to you my fatherly arms. Come, all of you; I will receive you all - no less those of the South than those of the West, and of the North, who, gained over by Rigaud, have deserted your firesides, your wives, your children, to place yourselves at his side.
Toussaint LouvertureRead