Quotes, Quotations and Sayings

Be curious, not judgmental.

Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.

Press close bare-bosomed night -- press close magnetic nourishing night! Night of south winds! night of the large few stars! Still nodding night! mad naked summer night.

The only dance masters I could have were Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Walt Whitman and Nietzsche.

All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.

Produce great men, the rest follows.

A great city is that which has the greatest men and women.

The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.

I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers.

O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, you express me better than I can express myself.

When we were at school we were taught to sing the songs of the Europeans. How many of us were taught the songs of the Wanyamwezi or of the Wahehe? Many of us have learnt to dance the rumba, or the cha cha, to rock and roll and to twist and even to dance the waltz and foxtrot. But how many of us can dance, or have even heard of the gombe sugu, the mangala, nyang umumi, kiduo, or lele mama?

Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.

Joe: What is known as the United States' attic? Andy: Massachusetts? Joe: No, the Smithsonian. (Later...) Andy: What was the name of Barbara Walters' first television partner? Joe: Jack Dempsey?;"During a game of Trivial Pursuit at 2 in the morning.

Either define the moment or the moment will define you.

How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!

The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman: if it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world.

This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with the powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers, of families: read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life: re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul.

Their manners, speech, dress, friendships, -- the freshness and candor of their physiognomy -- the picturesque looseness of their carriage -- their deathless attachment to freedom -- their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean -- the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states -- the fierceness of their roused resentment -- their curiosity and welcome of novelty -- their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy -- their susceptibility to a slight -- the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors -- the fluency of their speech -- their delight in music, a sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul -- their good temper and open-handedness -- the terrible significance of their elections, the President's taking off his hat to them, not they to him -- these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it.

In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name. And I leave them where they are, for I know that wherever I go, others will punctually come for ever and ever.

Of course I'm a black writer. I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call ''literature'' is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hasidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.

Sir Walter, being strangely surprised and put out of his countenance at so great a table, gives his son a damned blow over the face. His son, as rude as he was, would not strike his father, but strikes over the face the gentleman that sat next to him and said ''Box about: twill come to my father anon.''

I have had, and may have still, a thousand friends, as they are called, in life, who are like one's partners in the waltz of this world --not much remembered when the ball is over.

Camerado, I give you my hand, I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or law; Will you give me yourself?

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

Sir Walter, with his 61 years of life, although he never wrote a novel until he was over 40, had, fortunately for the world, a longer working career than most of his brethren.

And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.

I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.

My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am, Encompass worlds but never try to encompass me, I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you. Writing and talk do not prove me, I carry the plenum of proof in my face, With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.

Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gathered, it is the fourth of Seventh-month, (what salutes of cannon and small arms!)

Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?

Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition, they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago.

O the joy of the strong-brawn'd fighter, towering in the arena in perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent.

When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with such applause in the lecture room, how soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; Till rising and gliding out, I wandered off by myself, in the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, looked up in perfect silence at the stars.

To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.

Camerado! This is no book; who touches this touches a man.

The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.

The beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Let that which stood in front go behind, let that which was behind advance to the front, let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions, let the old propositions be postponed.

Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people.

If you done it, it ain't bragging.

The values of the Walt Disney company: The four C s: Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, Consistency, and the greatest of these is Confidence.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes).

Oh while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me.

Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.

To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.

This face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage, snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.

A morning glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.