If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?
Maya AngelouRead
The honorary duty of a human being is to love.
Interpretation
Loving others is a fundamental responsibility of being human.
Maya Angelou emphasizes that one of the most important and honorable roles we have as human beings is to express love towards others. This love transcends mere affection; it is a lifelong commitment to understanding, caring for, and supporting each other in our shared human experience.
In practice
In a speech about community service, one might say, 'As Maya Angelou said, the honorary duty of a human being is to love, reminding us to support one another.'
If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
If you love something - and there are things that I love - you do want more and more and more of it, but that's not the way to produce good work.
Love alone can explain the mysteries of Love.
If one day you have to choose between the world and love, remember this: If you choose the world youβll be left without love, but if you choose love, with it you will conquer the world
But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything. what greed and privilege to build up over whole centuries the indignation of a pious spirit, with its natural following of oppressed souls, will cast down with a single shove.
If there are junk yards in hell, love is the dog that guards the gates.
The lover must often say, "I love because I must, because I will it. I love for myself, not for others. I love for the joy it gives me - and incedentally, only - for that joy it gives to others. If they reinforce me it will be good. If they do not, it also will be good, for I will to love."
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