Maya Angelou, American author: "Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it"

Success is often treated as something visible: a bigger salary, a better title, public recognition or evidence that a person has risen above everyone around them. Maya Angelou offered a much more demanding definition.

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it,” the celebrated American author, poet and civil rights activist said in a quote that has endured because of its simplicity.

Angelou ’s words shift the measure of achievement away from what other people can see. Her definition asks whether a person is comfortable with who they have become, whether they find meaning in the work that fills their days and whether they can respect the choices they made getting there.

That perspective was especially striking coming from someone whose own life produced no shortage of conventional accomplishments.

Angelou published seven autobiographies, multiple essay collections and numerous volumes of poetry, while also working across theater, film and television.

Her 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , brought her international recognition and established her as one of the most important literary voices of her generation.

Her definition of success was more complicated

Her rise was anything but straightforward. Before becoming famous as a writer, Angelou worked a wide variety of jobs, including as a cook, nightclub performer and cast member in Porgy and Bess.

She later worked as a journalist in Egypt and Ghana and became deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

She worked with both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X , experiences that placed questions of dignity, identity and moral conviction at the center of her public life.

Angelou ’s writing repeatedly examined race, trauma, family and identity, often asking what it takes to build a sense of self in a world that may try to define a person from the outside. Her idea of success therefore begins internally rather than with approval.

Questions of character and method are introduced in her ideas. Achievement alone isn't enough if reaching it requires behavior a person cannot respect afterward.

Angelou ’s own public career continued well beyond her literary breakthrough. She became the Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in 1982 and remained a prominent lecturer into her eighties.

In 1993, she delivered “On the Pulse of Morning” at Bill Clinton ’s first presidential inauguration, becoming the first poet to give an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy ’s inauguration in 1961.

Angelou accumulated honors, awards and more than 50 honorary degrees.