Langston Hughes quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Langston Hughes on Wise Famous Quotes.

Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.

How still,
How strangely still
The water is today,
It is not good
For water
To be so still that way.

~ "Sea Calm

When you turn the corner And you run into yourself Then you know that you have turned All the corners that are left.

Perhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people - the beauty within themselves.

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.

Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.

One of the great needs of Negro children is to have books about themselves and their lives that can help them be proud.

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, ...

Tell all my mourners
To mourn in red-
Cause there ain't no sense
In my bein' dead.

As much as they loved Negroes, Neroes didn't seem to love Michael and Anne.

The prerequisite for writing is having something to say.

You see, books had been happening to me.

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

America never was America to me And yet I swear this oath - America will be!

Writing is like travelling. It's wonderful to go somewhere, but you get tired of staying.

Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.

Gather quickly
Out of darkness
All the songs you know
And throw them at the sun
Before they melt
Like snow.

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

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

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

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.

I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.

Frosting Freedom Is just frosting On somebody else's Cake
And so must be Till we Learn how to Bake.

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

They rung my bell to ask me.
Could I recommend a maid.
I said, yes, your momma.

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.

The rhythm of life is a jazz rhythm

Hard as I try, daddy-o, I really do not like concert singers. They are always singing in some foreign language.

The past has been a mint Of blood and sorrow. That must not be True of tomorrow.

Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

Misery is when you heard on the radio that the neighborhood you live in is a slum but you always thought it was home.

Reach Up Your Hand ... and take a star.

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

Cheap little rhymes
A cheap little tune
Are sometimes as dangerous
As a sliver of the moon.

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

Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.

What happens to a dream deferred?

I will not take 'but' for an answer.

Poetry is the human soul entire
Squeezed like a lemon or a lime,
Drop by drop into atomic words".

As I learn from you,
I guess you learn
From me
although
You're older
and white
And somewhat more free.

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

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

I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.

Harriet Tubman lived to see the harvest.

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

It were depression, too. They cut my wages down once at the foundry. They cut my wages down again. Then they cut my wages out, also the job.

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.

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

I got the Weary Blues And I can't be satisfied.

Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas

Whiskey just naturally likes me but beer likes me better.

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.

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

Because shoes got by devilish ways will burn your feet.

The speaker catches fire
looking at their faces.
His words
jump down to stand
in listener's places.

An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose

Life is a egg you have to be patient and carefull with it or it will brake

My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind,

Joe has sense enough to know
He is a god.
So many gods don't know.

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

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

Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.

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.

Looks like what drives me crazy Don't have no effect on you
But I'm gonna keep on at it Till it drives you crazy, too.

The Jewish people and the Negro people both know the meaning of Nordic supremacy. We have both looked into the eyes of terror.

I asked you, baby,
If you understood-
You told me that you didn't,
But you thought you would.

When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.

For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.

I went down to the river, I set down on the bank. I tried to think but couldn't, So I jumped in and sank.

Violent anger makes me physically ill.

I wish the rent Was heaven sent.

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

Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you - / Then, it will be true.

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

Your explanation depresses me," I said.
"Your nonsense depresses me," said Simple.

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams ...

I swear to the Lord,I still can't see,Why Democracy means,Everybody but me.

Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

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

My writing has been largely concerned with the depicting of Negro life in America.

Road's in front o' me, Nothin' to do but walk.

Everything there is but lovin' leaves a rust on your old soul

LIBERTY!
FREEDOM!
DEMOCRACY!
True anyhow no matter how many
Liars use those words.

Of course Covarrubias wasn't a negro, but how he caught the darky spirit!

Though you may hear me holler, And you may see me cry
I'll be dogged, sweet baby, If you gonna see me die.

Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.

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.

To some people
Love is given,
To others
Only Heaven.

Pleasured equally In seeking as in finding, Each detail minding, Old Walt went seeking And finding.

While over Alabama earth These words are gently spoken: Serve and hate will die unborn. Love and chains are broken.

Most musicians remain poor. But the music that they make, even if it does not bring them millions, gives millions of people happiness.

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

Life is a big sea full of many fish. I let down my nets and pulled. I'm still pulling.

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

There is no color line in death.

The sea is a desert of waves,
A wilderness of water.

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

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

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

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.