Countee Cullen Quotes

The truth is... everything counts. Everything. Everything we do and everything we say. Everything helps or hurts; everything adds to or takes away from someone else.

There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call 'the breaks.

If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.

For we must be one thing or the other, an asset or a liability, the sinew in your wing to help you soar, or the chain to bind you to earth.

My poetry has become the way of my giving out what music is within me.

We shall not always plant while others reap

We were not made to eternally weep.

The key to all strange things is in thy heart..../ My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas.

I have a rendezvous with life.

What is Africa to me: Copper sun or scarlet sea, Jungle star or jungle track, Strong bronzed men, or regal black Women from whose loins I sprang When the birds of Eden sang?

Never love with all your heart, It only ends in aching.

Dame Poverty gave me my name, And Pain godfathered me.

Not for myself I make this prayer, But for this race of mine That stretches forth from shadowed places Dark hands for bread and wine.

I was reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage.

What is last year's snow to me, Last year's anything? The tree Budding yearly must forget How its past arose or set

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:/ To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

[W]e have always resented the natural inclination of most white people to demand spirituals the moment it is known that a Negro is about to sing. So often the request has seemed to savor of the feeling that we could do this and this alone.

The loss of love is a terrible thing; They lie who say that death is worse.

All day long and all night through, One thing only must I do: Quench my pride and cool my blood, Lest I perish in the flood.

Lord, I fashion dark gods, too, Daring even to give You Dark despairing features

The night whose sable breast relieves the stark, White stars, is no less lovely being dark

Ever at Thy glowing altar Must my heart grow sick and falter, Wishing He I served were black.

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind

I cut my teeth as the black raccoon-- For implements of battle.

Lord, forgive me if my need Sometimes shapes a human creed.