Top 186 Quotes & Sayings by Langston Hughes - Page 2

I stuck my head out the window this morning and spring kissed me bang in the face.

Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.

Folks, I'm telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean- so get yourself a little loving in between.

Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.

Teach us all to do right, Lord, please, and to get along together with that atom bomb on this earth because I do not want it to fall on me-nor Thee-nor anybody living. Amen!

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

When poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color, color lines and colonies, somebody tells the police.

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again!

Whiskey just naturally likes me but beer likes me better.

Oh, God of Dust and Rainbows, Help us to see That without the dust the rainbow Would not be.

Life is a system of half-truths and lies, Opportunistic, convenient evasion.

Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along.

There is no color line in death. I swear to the lord I still can't see Why Democracy means Everybody but me. O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath - America will be! I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.

Never look for a worm in the apple of your eye.

Well, son, I'll tell you: Life for me ain't been no crystal stair. It's had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor -- Bare. But all the time I'se been a-climbin' on, And reachin' landin's, And turnin' corners, And sometimes goin' in the dark Where there ain't been no light. So boy, don't you turn back. Don't you set down on the steps 'Cause you finds it's kinder hard. Don't you fall now -- For I'se still goin', honey, I'se still climbin', And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

Believing everything she read In the daily news, (No in-between to choose) She thought that only One side won, Not that BOTH Might lose.

I wish the rent Was heaven sent.

There is no color line in art.

Gather out of star-dust, Earth-dust, Cloud-dust, Storm-dust, And splinters of hail, One handful of dream-dust, Not for sale.

America never was America to me And yet I swear this oath - America will be!

Negro blood is sure powerful, because just one drop of black blood makes a colored man. One drop--you are a Negro! . . . Black is powerful.

If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed.

Gather up In the arms of your love—Those who expect No love from above.

When you turn the corner And you run into yourself Then you know that you have turned All the corners that are left.

We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.

LIBERTY! FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY! True anyhow no matter how many Liars use those words.

Road's in front o' me, Nothin' to do but walk.

Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.

Money and art are far apart.

I stay cool, and dig all jive, That's the way I stay alive. My motto, as I live and learn, is Dig and be dug In return.

Looks like what drives me crazy Don't have no effect on you-- But I'm gonna keep on at it Till it drives you crazy, too.

I will not take "but" for an answer.

Life is a big sea full of many fish. I let down my nets and pulled. I'm still pulling.

Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.

The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negroes had but few pegs to fall.

I will not take 'but' for an answer. Negroes have been looking at democracy's 'but' too long.

One of the great difficulties about being a member of a minority race is that so many kindhearted, well-meaning bores gather around to help.

I loved my friend He went away from me There's nothing more to say The poem ends, Soft as it began- I loved my friend.

Summer was made to give you a taste of what hell is like. Winter was made for landladies to charge high rents and keep cold radiators and make a fortune off of poor tenants.

I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I've known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Politics in any country in the world is dangerous. For the poet, politics in any country had better be disguised as poetry. Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.

The rhythm of life is a jazz rhythm

For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn't write anything.

Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.

We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.

Out of love, No regrets-- Though the goodness Be wasted forever. Out of love, No regrets-- Though the return Be never.

Life dosent frighten me at all.

The past has been a mint Of blood and sorrow. That must not be True of tomorrow.

Through my grandmother's stories always life moved, moved heroically toward an end. Nobody ever cried in my grandmother's stories. They worked, or schemed, or fought. But no crying. When my grandmother died, I didn't cry, either. Something about my grandmother's stories (without her ever having said so) taught me the uselessness of crying about anything."

Well, when Christ comes back this time, I hope He comes back mad His own self. I hope He drives the Jim Crowers out of their high places, every living last one of them from Washington to Texas.

How still, How strangely still The water is today, It is not good For water To be so still that way. ~ "Sea Calm

Rest at pale evening... A tall slim tree... Night coming tenderly Black like me

Misery is when you heard on the radio that the neighborhood you live in is a slum but you always thought it was home.

I've been scared and battered. My hopes the wind done scattered. Snow has friz me, Sun has baked me, Looks like between 'em they done Tried to make me Stop laughin', stop lovin', stop livin'-- But I don't care! I'm still here!

It has seemed to me that most people are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have been.

I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes, but I laugh, and eat well, and grow strong.

Hang yourself, poet, in your own words. Otherwise, you are dead.

There's a certain amount of traveling in a dream deferred.

7 x 7 + love = An amount Infinitely above: 7 x 7 - love.

Humor is when the joke's on you but hits the other fellow first -- before it boomerangs.