Top 100 Langston Hughes Quotes

#1. The calm, Cool face of the river, Asked me for a kiss

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #5788
#2. Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.-

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #53237
#3. To my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders, to change through the force of his art that old whispering 'I want to be white,' hidden in the aspirations of his people, to 'Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro - and beautiful!'

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #73094
#4. I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing ... not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #87817
#5. This morning I paid seventy cents for two little old dried-up slivers of bacon and one cockeyed egg. It took me till noon to get my appetite back.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #110939
#6. 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.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #131049
#7. An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #135874
#8. 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.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #158335
#9. To create a market for your writing you have to be consistent, professional, a continuing writer - not just a one-article or a one-story or a one-book man.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #208177
#10. 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.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #212747
#11. 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.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #215377
#12. So since I'm still here livin', I guess I will live on. I could've died for love
But for livin' I was born.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #219854
#13. 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.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #227785
#14. Words Like Freedom
There are words like Freedom
Sweet and wonderful to say.
On my heartstrings freedom sings
All day everyday.
There are words like Liberty
That almost make me cry.
If you had known what I know
You would know why.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #232117
#15. America never was America to me And yet I swear this oath - America will be!

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #290108
#16. The Dream Keeper
Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamer,
Bring me all your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #346219
#17. Joe has sense enough to know
He is a god.
So many gods don't know.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #347916
#18. Though you may hear me holler, And you may see me cry
I'll be dogged, sweet baby, If you gonna see me die.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #355631
#19. Color
Wear it
Like a banner
For the proud
Not like a shroud.
Wear it
Like a song
Soaring high
Not moan or cry.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #356445
#20. I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #364723
#21. Good morning, Revolution: You're the very best friend I ever had. We gonna pal around together from now on

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #367931
#22. Oppression
Now dreams
Are not available
To the dreamers,
Nor songs
To the singers.
In some lands
Dark night
And cold steel
Prevail
But the dream
Will come back,
And the song
Break
Its jail.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #380814
#23. I live in Harlem, New York City. I am unmarried. I like 'Tristan,' goat's milk, short novels, lyric poems, heat, simple folk, boats and bullfights; I dislike 'Aida,' parsnips, long novels, narrative poems, cold, pretentious folk, buses and bridges.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #388881
#24. God in his infinite wisdom
Did not make me very wise-
So when my actions are stupid
They hardly take God by surprise.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #418179
#25. Peace
We passed their graves:
The dead men there,
Winners or losers,
Did not care.
In the dark
They could not see
Who had gained
The victory.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #429333
#26. A dog gets lonesome just like a human. He wants to associate with other dogs, but when they take him out, the poor dog is on a leash and cannot run around.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #448928
#27. White folks sure is a case!" She laid three slices of bread on top of the stove. "So spoiled with colored folks waiting on 'em all their days! Don't know what they'll do in heaven, 'cause I'm gonna sit down up there myself.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #490797
#28. Life is a egg you have to be patient and carefull with it or it will brake

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #542433
#29. Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #575304
#30. The speaker catches fire
looking at their faces.
His words
jump down to stand
in listener's places.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #583181
#31. I stuck my head out the window this morning and spring kissed me bang in the face.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #596450
#32. 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.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #626396
#33. Humor is when the joke's on you but hits the other fellow first
before it boomerangs.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #640423
#34. I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #655103
#35. The only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you'll finish it, ...

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #663985
#36. I wish the rent Was heaven sent.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #702921
#37. I am so tired of waiting.
Aren't you,
for the world to become good
and beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
and cut the world in two
and see what worms are eating
at the rind.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #737147
#38. For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #760382
#39. Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #774890
#40. Jazz, to me, is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul - the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #799368
#41. I tire so of hearing people say, Let things take their course. Tomorrow is another day. I do not need my freedom when I'm dead. I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #824045
#42. Violent anger makes me physically ill.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #899968
#43. Certainly there is, for the American Negro artist who can escape the restrictions the more advanced among his own group would put upon him, a great field of unused material ready for his art.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #922044
#44. Wear it Like a banner For the proud? Not like a shroud.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #926988
#45. Frosting Freedom Is just frosting On somebody else's Cake
And so must be Till we Learn how to Bake.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #941109
#46. My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind,

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #947331
#47. I don't dare start thinking in the morning. I don't dare start thinking in the morning. If I thought thoughts in bed, Them thoughts would bust my head
So I don't dare start thinking in the morning.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #961701
#48. Love is a naked shadow, On a gnarled and naked tree.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #963693
#49. Writing is like travelling. It's wonderful to go somewhere, but you get tired of staying.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #970702
#50. 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!

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #971858
#51. I felt very bad in Washington ... I didn't like my job, and I didn't know what was going to happen to me, and I was cold and half-hungry, so I wrote a great many poems.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #981401
#52. Life is a system of half-truths and lies, Opportunistic, convenient evasion.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1001403
#53. Good evening, daddy! Ain't you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? Trilling the treble And twining the bass Into midnight ruffles Of cat-gut lace.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1005646
#54. Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1037996
#55. In all my life, I have never been free. I have never been able to do anything with freedom, except in the field of my writing.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1053715
#56. Very early in life, it seemed to me that there was a relationship between the problems of the Negro people in America and the Jewish people in Russia, and that the Jewish people's problems were worse than ours.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1075337
#57. But there are certain very practical things American Negro writers can do. And must do. There's a song that says, "the time ain't long." That song is right. Something has got to change in America-and change soon. We must help that change to come.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1085513
#58. As long as what is is-and Georgia is Georgia-I will take Harlem for mine. At least, if trouble comes, I will have my own window to shoot from.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1087776
#59. My father hated Negroes.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1092450
#60. The rhythm of life is a jazz rhythm

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1112264
#61. Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1120253
#62. Lawrence has a wonderful hill in it, with a university on top and the first time I ran away from home, I ran up the hill and looked across the world: Kansas wheat fields and the Kaw River, and I wanted to go some place, too. I got a whipping for it.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1172311
#63. I look at my own body
With eyes no longer blind-
And I see that my own hands can make
The world that's in my mind.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1317085
#64. Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1356742
#65. Justice
That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1373318
#66. We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1375597
#67. To some people
Love is given,
To others
Only Heaven.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1399376
#68. I got the Weary Blues And I can't be satisfied.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1417185
#69. Afraid

We cry among the skyscrapers
As our ancestors
Cried among the palms in Africa
Because we are alone,
It is night,
And we're afraid.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1417700
#70. Life is a big sea full of many fish. I let down my nets and pulled. I'm still pulling.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1426240
#71. My chief literary influences have been Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman. My favorite public figures include Jimmy Durante, Marlene Dietrich, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, and Henry Armstrong.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1437349
#72. The past has been a mint Of blood and sorrow. That must not be True of tomorrow.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1447083
#73. I do not want no pretty woman. First thing you know, you fall in love with her-then you got to kill somebody about her. She'll make you so jealous, you'll bust!

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1466616
#74. Even the 'Negro' shows like 'Amos and Andy' and 'Beulah' are written largely by white writers - the better to preserve the stereotypes, I imagine.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1468735
#75. I know how to handle women who act like ladies, but my landlady ain't no lady. Sometimes I even wish I was living with my wife again so I could have my own place and not have no landladies.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1474690
#76. A world I dream where black or white, whatever race you be, will share the bounties of the earth and every man is free

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1480053
#77. Life dosent frighten me at all.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1484321
#78. Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1592354
#79. 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.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1597260
#80. Reach Up Your Hand ... and take a star.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1601448
#81. Misery is when you heard on the radio that the neighborhood you live in is a slum but you always thought it was home.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1618430
#82. O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1620604
#83. I will not take 'but' for an answer.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1646554
#84. How still,
How strangely still
The water is today,
It is not good
For water
To be so still that way.

~ "Sea Calm

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1675428
#85. Because shoes got by devilish ways will burn your feet.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1689913
#86. I'm so tired of waiting, aren't you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1693866
#87. 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.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1698201
#88. Everything there is but lovin' leaves a rust on your old soul

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1705817
#89. Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1760477
#90. Rest at pale evening ... A tall slim tree ... Night coming tenderly Black like me

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1781019
#91. Hang yourself, poet, in your own words.
Otherwise, you are dead.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1802704
#92. Whiskey just naturally likes me but beer likes me better.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1823386
#93. Quiet Girl
I would liken you
To a night without stars
Were it not for your eyes.
I would liken you
To a sleep without dreams
Were it not for your songs.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1832005
#94. The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night And I love the rain.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1838975
#95. Because my mouth Is wide with laughter And my throat Is deep with song, You do not think I suffer after I have held my pain So long? Because my mouth Is wide with laughter You do not hear My inner cry? Because my feet Are gay with dancing You do not know I die?

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1856517
#96. The prerequisite for writing is having something to say.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1863383
#97. These feet have walked ten thousand miles working for white folks and another ten thousand keeping up with colored.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1865357
#98. 2 and 2 are 4.
4 and 4 are 8.
But what would happen
If the last 4 was late?
And how would it be
If one 2 was me?
Or if the first 4 was you
Divided by 2?

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1867171
#99. One of the great needs of Negro children is to have books about themselves and their lives that can help them be proud.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1868194
#100. You see, books had been happening to me.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes #1871176

Famous Authors

Popular Topics

Scroll to Top