Langston Hughes Quotes - Page 3

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.

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

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

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

I wish the rent Was heaven sent.

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

I will not take "but" for an answer.

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

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.

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!

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

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!

Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.

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.

The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night And I love the rain.

Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be.

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

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

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.

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.

There is no color line in art.

I am a Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa.

Money and art are far apart.

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.

If you want to honor me, give some young boy or girl who's coming along trying to create arts and write and compose and sing and act and paint and dance and make something out of the beauties of the Negro race-give that child some help.