Langston Hughes Quotes - Page 4

The rhythm of life is a jazz rhythm

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

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

Whiskey just naturally likes me but beer likes me better.

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

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.

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!

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

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

Life dosent frighten me at all.

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

We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.

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."

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Melting pot Harlem-Harlem of honey and chocolate and caramel and rum and vinegar and lemon and lime and gall. Dusky dream Harlem rumbling into a nightmare tunnel where the subway from the Bronx keeps right on downtown.

What happens to a dream deferred?

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.

They [the police] learned something from them Harlem riots. They used to beat your head right in public, but now they only beat it after they get you down to the station house.