Top 5 Quotes & Sayings by Stephen Foster

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American writer Stephen Foster.
Last updated on December 22, 2024.
Stephen Foster

Stephen Collins Foster, known also as "the father of American music", was an American composer and songwriter known primarily for his parlour and minstrel music during the Romantic period. He wrote more than 200 songs, including "Oh! Susanna", "Hard Times Come Again No More", "Camptown Races", "Old Folks at Home", "My Old Kentucky Home", "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair", "Old Black Joe", and "Beautiful Dreamer", and many of his compositions remain popular today. He has been identified as "the most famous songwriter of the nineteenth century" and may be the most recognizable American composer in other countries. Most of his handwritten music manuscripts are lost, but editions issued by publishers of his day feature in various collections.

Gone are the days when my heart was young and gay, Gone are my friends from the cotton fields away, Gone from the earth to a better land I know, I hear their gentle voices calling Old Black Joe.
You may wonder, 'How can I leave it all behind if I am just coming back to it? How can I make a new beginning if I simply return to the old? The answer lies in the return. You will not come back to the 'same old thing. What you return to has changed because you have changed. Your perceptions will be altered. You will not incorporate into the same body, status, or world you left behind. The river has been flowing while you were gone. Now it does not look like the same river.
Dear Sir: I will wish to establish my name as the best Ethiopian songwriter. But I am not encouraged in undertaking this as long as 'The Old Folks At Home' stares me in the face with another's name on it.
I sought to reform minstrelsy among refined people by making words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order. ... Some of my songs should be performed in a pathetic, not a comic style.
Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me, starlight and dewdrop are waiting for thee. — © Stephen Foster
Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me, starlight and dewdrop are waiting for thee.
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