Susan L. Taylor Quotes

When I joined ‘Essence,’ I was a young, single mother. I was 24. I hadn’t gone to college. I wasn’t making any money at ‘Essence’ – what was it, $500 a month – and I was struggling. So I was always looking down the road, always hoping for a better, you know, tomorrow.

Stress and worry, they solve nothing. What they do is block creativity. You are not even able to think about the solutions. Every problem has a solution.

We live in an abundant universe. Everything we need to take care of ourselves, those things are all around us. Don’t focus on that economy. Don’t believe that there’s not enough for you.

Use missteps as stepping stones to deeper understanding and greater achievement.

We are forever looking outside ourselves, seeking approval and striving to impress others. But living to please others is a poor substitute for self-love, for no matter how family and friends may adore us, they can never satisfy our visceral need to love and honor ourselves.

Parents really just need support and not to be blamed and not to have fingers pointed at them.

Seeds of faith are always within us; sometimes it takes a crisis to nourish and encourage their growth.

As we rise to meet the challenges that are a natural part of living, we awaken to our many undiscovered gifts, to our inner power and our purpose.

Historically, black women have suffered tremendously, but today’s black women are the triumph. We have choices, and that’s what freedom is all about: having the power to choose.

There are no meaningless experiences.

It’s hunger. It’s homelessness, often. It’s underfunded, under-resourced schools. It’s abuse beyond the chilling. It’s having overwhelmed parents and caregivers. Those are the things that young people are struggling with beyond our view.

Each moment is magical, precious and complete and will never exist again. We forget that now is the moment we are in, that the next one isn’t guaranteed. And if we are blessed with another moment, any joy, creativity or wisdom it brings will ensue from the way we live in the present one.

I don’t care how much you know, how many books you read, how you much you study and, you know, how educated you are, you’re still going to struggle. Life is challenging.

We don’t have an eternity to realize our dreams, only the time we are here.

We will never finish everything on our to-do lists. It’s not possible, and that is life!

Self-love is the starting point for everything.

We have to fill our hearts with gratitude. Gratitude makes everything that we have more than enough.

Thoughts have power; thoughts are energy. And you can make your world or break it by your own thinking.

Love is the life spring of our existence. The more love you give, the happier you feel and the more love you will have within you to give.

Don’t identify yourself with labels and brands and have to buy every cute thing you see. Invest in the things that will grow in equity.

Our greatest problems in life come not so much from the situations we confront as from our doubts about our ability to handle them.

We don’t have time to waste. Our communities are crumbling; our children are under siege. Failing schools and a for-profit prison-industrial complex are sucking the life out of black homes and communities. We are not going down like this!

I write about spirituality not so we get strong from within and achieve some state of nirvana and then distance ourselves from the real world. I write about it so we can feel empowered to doing the critical work that this generation of black women are charged with doing.

See the inevitable changes not as threats but as opportunities that can deepen our understanding and bring us wisdom and growth.

The more we nourish our internal world, the more powerful we grow in the external world.