Top 100 M Langston Quotes
#2. Your explanation depresses me," I said.
"Your nonsense depresses me," said Simple.
Langston Hughes
#3. Tell all my mourners
To mourn in red-
Cause there ain't no sense
In my bein' dead.
Langston Hughes
#4. Say it. Say your mine, Maddie. You own my heart now, baby. I gotta have yours too.
K. Langston
#5. Even to an outsider like myself, not only in the theatre was such disunity evident, but in much else in government Spain. Alvarez del Vayo, Socialist Minister of Foreign Affairs, once asked, Why is it Spain's people are so great, but her leaders so small?
Langston Hughes
#6. Langston has been in love. Twice. His first big romance ended so badly that he had to leave
Rachel Cohn
#7. 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
#8. Perhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people - the beauty within themselves.
Langston Hughes
#9. 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
#10. That's a nice quote," Langston said. "Underline it and fold down the page for me, will you?" I did as instructed.
Rachel Cohn
#11. 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
#12. Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you - / Then, it will be true.
Langston Hughes
#13. The Jewish people and the Negro people both know the meaning of Nordic supremacy. We have both looked into the eyes of terror.
Langston Hughes
#14. I am that rose that grew from concrete, I am the ENTIRE mother to son Langston Hughes poem. And I'm still climbing ...
Jaha Knight
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. I will not take 'but' for an answer. Negroes have been looking at democracy's 'but' too long.
Langston Hughes
#19. 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
#20. Poetry is the human soul entire
Squeezed like a lemon or a lime,
Drop by drop into atomic words".
Langston Hughes
#21. Negroes
Sweet and docile,
Meek, humble, and kind:
Beware the day
They change their minds!
Wind
In the cotton fields,
Gentle breeze:
Beware the hour
It uproots trees!
Langston Hughes
#22. Strange how knowing our story had no happy ending had freed us to live in the moment. We weren't guy and girl. We weren't damaged and terminal. We were just now.
Elizabeth Langston
#23. Cheap little rhymes
A cheap little tune
Are sometimes as dangerous
As a sliver of the moon.
Langston Hughes
#24. Have you ever experienced human love?"
"Yes. Once."
Regret shadowed his face. "Then why would you be willing to repeat it?"
"What we learn is worth more than what we lose.
Elizabeth Langston
#25. This is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America - this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.
Langston Hughes
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn't write anything.
Langston Hughes
#30. 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
#31. I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class, and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry. Well, everybody knows - except us - that all Negroes have rhythms, so they elected me class poet.
Langston Hughes
#32. 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
#33. 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
#34. I asked you, baby,
If you understood-
You told me that you didn't,
But you thought you would.
Langston Hughes
#35. if you're going to use the word 'dream' in a poem, you had better be langston hughes.
Jewelle L. Gomez
#36. America never was America to me And yet I swear this oath - America will be!
Langston Hughes
#37. It has seemed to me that most people are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have been.
Langston Hughes
#38. Most musicians remain poor. But the music that they make, even if it does not bring them millions, gives millions of people happiness.
Langston Hughes
#40. I would rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done. ~Lucille Ball
K. Langston
#41. 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.
Langston Hughes
#42. Folks, I'm telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean- so get yourself a little loving in between.
Langston Hughes
#43. 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
#44. Joe has sense enough to know
He is a god.
So many gods don't know.
Langston Hughes
#45. The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negro had but few pegs to fall.
Langston Hughes
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. CHAPTER 4 WHEN FEAR OUTSHINES COURAGE A secret POV
K. Langston
#49. I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.
Langston Hughes
#50. Good morning, Revolution: You're the very best friend I ever had. We gonna pal around together from now on
Langston Hughes
#51. I already knew the answer to that. I was just too afraid to admit it.
K. Langston
#52. 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
#53. 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
#54. 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!
Langston Hughes
#55. We are men on a budget. I mean, why go all the way to Amsterdam when you can just go to Harry Hines?
Anthony Langston
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. When you turn the corner And you run into yourself Then you know that you have turned All the corners that are left.
Langston Hughes
#60. You never know when love will come along and change...everything.
K. Langston
#62. 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
#63. My writing has been largely concerned with the depicting of Negro life in America.
Langston Hughes
#64. Life is a egg you have to be patient and carefull with it or it will brake
Langston Hughes
#65. 7 x 7 + love = An amount Infinitely above: 7 x 7 - love.
Langston Hughes
#66. This, the dream and the dreamer, wandering in the desert from Hopkinsville to Vienna in love with a streetwalker named Music. ...
Langston Hughes
#67. Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed -
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
Langston Hughes
#68. Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along.
Langston Hughes
#69. There's a certain amount of traveling in a dream deferred.
Langston Hughes
#70. The speaker catches fire
looking at their faces.
His words
jump down to stand
in listener's places.
Langston Hughes
#71. I stuck my head out the window this morning and spring kissed me bang in the face.
Langston Hughes
#72. Both of them were very good and kind - the one who went to church and the one who didn't. And no doubt from them I learned to like both Christians and sinners equally well.
Langston Hughes
#73. 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
#74. Humor is when the joke's on you but hits the other fellow first
before it boomerangs.
Langston Hughes
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. I wanna punch you in the throat right now. Do you think that's sexy?
K. Langston
#78. Out of love,
No regrets
Though the goodness
Be wasted forever.
Out of love,
No regrets
Though the return
Be never.
Langston Hughes
#80. Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid.
Langston Hughes
#81. 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.
Langston Hughes
#82. Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear.
Langston Hughes
#83. 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
#84. A book was mere paper splattered with ink until a reader's mind gave it life.
Elizabeth Langston
#87. I didn't know who Langston Hughes was till he met me backstage.
Ben Vereen
#88. 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
#89. I am a Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa.
Langston Hughes
#90. 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
#91. My brother, Langston, said, "Lily, you don't understand because you've never been in love. If you had a boyfriend, you'd understand." Langston has a new boyfriend and all I understand from that is a sorry state of co-dependence.
Rachel Cohn
#92. Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be.
Langston Hughes
#93. Because this is what love tastes like. Feels like. It's me and you. Together. Just like this. Nothing between us." He lifted his head, holding my gaze. "Except love.
K. Langston
#95. Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
Langston Hughes
#96. I want to walk through this life with you by my side. Your hand in mine. Forever.
K. Langston
#97. 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
#98. Wear it Like a banner For the proud? Not like a shroud.
Langston Hughes
#99. I hope I never love someone so much that they could hurt me the way Langston was hurt.
Rachel Cohn
#100. You don't look like a genie."
"Palazzo pants and sequined vests don't cut it in the United States.
Elizabeth Langston
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