Guest Author - Guest Editor

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.


A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.


A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.


A woman who is convinced that she deserves to accept only the best challenges herself to give the best. Then she is living phenomenally.


All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.


Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.


By the age of fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.
Bitterness is like cancer; it eats up the host. But anger is like fire; it burns it all clean.


Black women have not historically stood in the pulpit, but that doesn't undermine the fact that they built the churches and maintain the pulpits.


Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.


Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.


Education helps one case cease being intimidated by strange situations.


Effective action is always unjust.


For Africa to me is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.


How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!


I am overwhelmed by the grace and persistence of my people.


I believe that every person is born with talent.

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.


If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities.


If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.


If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning 'Good morning' at total strangers.


In order to be profoundly dishonest, a person must have one of two qualities: either he is unscrupulously ambitious, or he is unswervingly egocentric.


It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.


Listen carefully to what country people call mother wit. In those homely sayings are couched the collective wisdom of generations.


Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.


Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.


Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.


My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.


My life has been one great big joke,
a dance that's walked, a song that's spoke,
I laugh so hard I almost choke
when I think about myself.