Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

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.

You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.

remember this: When you cross my doorstep, you have already been raised. With what you have learned...you know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. Don't anybody raise you from the way you have been raised. Know you will have to make adaptations, in love, in relationships, in friends, in society, in work, but don't let anybody change your mind.

We need much less than we think we need.

Life loves the liver of it.

It is this belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable.

Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!

I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

We will sometimes have defeats in life but you can have defeats without being defeated, you could fail without being a failure. When you see failure and defeats as merely part of the process to get to when.

If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?

I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'.

Love heals. Heals and liberates. I use the word love, not meaning sentimentality, but a condition so strong that it may be that which holds the stars in their heavenly positions and that which causes the blood to flow orderly in our veins.

Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.

I am a Woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal Woman, that's me.

You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise!

Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.

People will never forget how you made them feel.

To those who are given much, much is expected.

I am a child of God. I always carry that with me.

Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it empowers us to develop courage; to trust that courage and build bridges with it; to trust those bridges and cross over them so we can attempt to reach each other.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.