Langston Hughes Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Langston Hughes quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

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

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

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

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

When poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color, color lines and colonies, somebody tells the police. — Langston Hughes

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

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

I stuck my head out the window this morning and spring kissed me bang in the face. — Langston Hughes

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

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

The prerequisite for writing is having something to say. — Langston Hughes

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.
I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you. — Langston Hughes

The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negro had but few pegs to fall. — Langston Hughes

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

Love is a naked shadow, On a gnarled and naked tree. — Langston Hughes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gather out of star-dust, Earth-dust, Cloud-dust, Storm-dust, And splinters of hail, One handful of dream-dust, Not for sale. — Langston Hughes

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

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

When a man starts out to build a world,
He starts first with himself — Langston Hughes

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

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

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

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

To some people
Love is given,
To others
Only Heaven. — Langston Hughes

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

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

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

Money and art are far apart. — Langston Hughes

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

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

Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on. — Langston Hughes

My father hated Negroes. — Langston Hughes

It's such a Bore Being always Poor. — Langston Hughes

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

Reach Up Your Hand ... and take a star. — Langston Hughes

The rhythm of life is a jazz rhythm — Langston Hughes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Folks, I'm telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean- so get yourself a little loving in between. — Langston Hughes

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

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

Suicide Note:
The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
-Langston Hughes — Kay Redfield Jamison

Life dosent frighten me at all. — Langston Hughes

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

For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly. — Langston Hughes

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

Violent anger makes me physically ill. — Langston Hughes

I wish the rent Was heaven sent. — Langston Hughes

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

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. — Langston Hughes

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

If I had to name one book that has had the most lasting influence on my work, I would pick 'The Big Sea' by Langston Hughes. — Pearl Cleage

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

Your explanation depresses me," I said.
"Your nonsense depresses me," said Simple. — Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams ... — Langston Hughes

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

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

Let the rain sing you a lullaby. — Langston Hughes

Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying. — Langston Hughes

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

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. — Langston Hughes

Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. — Langston Hughes

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

I'm so tired of waiting, aren't you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind? — Langston Hughes

There is no color line in death. — Langston Hughes

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

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

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

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

Wear it Like a banner For the proud? Not like a shroud. — Langston Hughes

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

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

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

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

I didn't know who Langston Hughes was till he met me backstage. — Ben Vereen

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

Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear. — Langston Hughes

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

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

if you're going to use the word 'dream' in a poem, you had better be langston hughes. — Jewelle L. Gomez

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. — Langston Hughes