If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?
Maya AngelouRead
I'm convinced that I'm a child of God. That's wonderful, exhilarating, liberating, full of promise. But the burden which goes along with that is, I'm convinced that everybody is a child of God. . . . I weep a lot. I thank God I laugh a lot, too. The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses the joy and responsibility of recognizing everyone as valuable beings, encouraging a balance of joy and sorrow in life.
Maya Angelou's quote reflects her profound belief in the intrinsic value of every individual as a 'child of God,' which brings both joy and a sense of duty to honor that premise. She acknowledges the emotional duality of life—experiencing both laughter and tears—and emphasizes the importance of striving for equilibrium between these emotions, suggesting that both should be embraced in our personal journeys.
Themes
Child Of GodEmotional BalanceLaughterTearsValue Of Life
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about embracing life's ups and downs.
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
A belief is only a thought you continue to think. A belief is nothing more than a chronic pattern of thought, and you have the ability - if you try even a little bit - to begin a new pattern, to tell a new story, to achieve a different vibration, to change your point of attraction.
Esther HicksRead
Seeking out causes is a pastime of the mind. There is no duality of cause and effect. Everything is its own cause.
Sri Nisargadatta MaharajRead
The humanity that is given to other people isn't given to us. There is an expendability that comes along with being African American.
Sterling K. BrownRead
I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
Theodore RoethkeRead
But you are involved in the world, and your actions have consequences for other people, and if you don't recognize that, then that's the supreme kind of cruelty. Everyone shares someone else's fate to some extent.
Malcolm BradburyRead
Sense your presence, the naked, unveiled, unclothed beingness. It is untouched by young or old, rich or poor, good or bad, or any other attributes.
Eckhart TolleRead