If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?
Maya AngelouRead
My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God - I thank God every time I think of it - I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the contrasting parenting styles of the speaker's mother during different stages of life.
Maya Angelou's quote illustrates the complexities of parenting and how a person's effectiveness can vary significantly depending on the age and needs of the child. She expresses gratitude for the influence of her grandmother during her formative years, while also acknowledging her mother's strengths in guiding her as a young adult, highlighting that parenting is not a one-size-fits-all role and that different phases of a child's life may require different strengths from parents.
Themes
ParentingFamilyGratitudeMotherGrandmother
In practice
Example use cases
During a family gathering, to reflect on the generations of parenting in our family.
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
I was a gift to my mother. She was a remarkable person. God or nature, or whatever those forces are, smiled on her, then passed me the best of her.
Sidney PoitierRead
I grew up one of six children with working-class parents in the Deep South. My mother was a college librarian, and my father worked in a shipyard. I never saw them balance a checkbook, but they kept a roof over our heads and got all six of us into college.
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My mother and father were never frightened of anything. They always felt that they should go through life happily and without fear, and they did that. And it was a great boon to my brother and myself.
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I have very supportive parents who said, 'Go and do what you want to do. Home is always here for you, and if you don't like it out there, come back. You can always do something different.' So when you have an option like that, you are able to choose roles or choose the things you want to be in.
Michelle YeohRead
I grew up without a father, who was kept a mystery to me. There was a sense of uprootedness, things being one day here and the next day not; a sense anything could happen. Then, all of a sudden, my mother met my stepfather, and her life became happier, and my life changed, my name changed.
John IrvingRead
We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead