Some time ago, a friend of mine discovered that I was a fan of Matsuo Basho. He, very thoughtfully, got a copy of Narrow Road to a Far Province and began to read it so that he might discuss it with me. But this kind intention went awry for he read it only until he found what he thought was an antiwar statement and then used it to argue about the first Gulf War. As it turned out, he missed the context and the statement he thought antiwar was nothing of the sort. He lost interest in Basho after that and we've never discussed it since.
I mention this because, as my friend Paul pointed out to me many years ago, we now read literature not as literature but as a way to validate our opinions. And the problems don't stop there. The deeper problem is that what gets selected is so often driven by a shallow narcissism that seeks to make a shallow and empty culture look profound. It's not our beliefs that we seek to validate but ourselves.
Here are some quotes that Maya Angelou's fans on the Internet thought worth highlighting:
Try to be the rainbow in someone else's cloud: I think Hallmark would be ashamed to use that.
If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude: This is your Grade 11 English teacher in a particularly self-righteous mood.
We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated: And people laugh at Yogi Berra.
When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time: Would it be too cruel to point out that this doesn't quite make sense? It's like saying, "The cat shovelled the teapot into calculus." It's a grammatically correct sentence that means nothing.
You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot—it's all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive: A truism followed by a non sequitur.
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you: There are tens of thousands of things that are greater agony, starting with stubbing your toe and building up to being tortured to death.
Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope: Contrast and compare: " Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away."
Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet: You'd forgive a mother for bragging about her precocious twelve-year-old child having said this provided she didn't ever bring it up again.
Anyone who writes can tell you that cranking out trite platitudes is an unavoidable hazard of the trade. If you were to spend a long time studying Homer, Plato, Dante, Shakespeare and Austen, you might find an equal list of awful quotes. The problem here is not Maya Angelou; the problem is the readers who've selected this crap. The problem is us and the way we have taken a great culture that was handed on to us and reduced it to almost nothing in the space of two generations.
Added: I've spent a little more time looking into this and I'm sorry to report that Angelou did say or write most of the lines quoted above or something very much like them. That said, there are some real gems to be found. Here are a few examples:
“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.”
“I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, 'I love you.' ... There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.”
“A woman's heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her.”
“If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?”
“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.”
There are probably more.
Added: I've spent a little more time looking into this and I'm sorry to report that Angelou did say or write most of the lines quoted above or something very much like them. That said, there are some real gems to be found. Here are a few examples:
“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.”
“I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, 'I love you.' ... There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.”
“A woman's heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her.”
“If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?”
“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.”
There are probably more.
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