Quote of the Day: Maya Angelou on Life & Wisdom

Late July has a particular kind of light, long days that make you feel like time is generous, and warm evenings that invite you to stay outside a little longer. It’s the season that quietly asks: are you participating in your life, or just moving through it? That question is tucked inside Maya Angelou’s mischievous, memorable line: “Life loves the liver of it.”

Angelou’s pun is the point. Not the organ, the “liver” as in the one who lives. Life, she suggests, responds to engagement. When you show up with attention, willingness, and a bit of brave curiosity, the world seems to offer more texture: better conversations, clearer ideas, unexpected opportunities.

This is practical counsel, not poetry for poetry’s sake. If you feel stuck, don’t wait for motivation, create motion. Take the meeting you’ve been avoiding, start the draft you keep postponing, ask the honest question, go for the walk without your phone. The “liver” of life doesn’t demand perfection; it demands presence. And presence builds courage, the kind that makes ordinary moments feel expandable instead of repetitive.

Maya Angelou earned her authority the hard way: through acclaimed writing, global speaking, and decades of civil rights work that transformed personal resilience into public wisdom. Her voice endures because it consistently returns power to the reader, your choices, your attention, your agency.

On July 21, 1969, humans stepped onto the Moon, an achievement made possible by people who refused to merely admire the horizon. Let that be today’s nudge: pick one edge of your comfort zone and cross it on purpose, even in a small way, and let life meet you there with its quiet, generous reply.