Langston Hughes citations

Page 2

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

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

“Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.”

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

“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.”

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

“I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.”

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

~ "Sea Calm”

“When a man starts out to build a world,
He starts first with himself”

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

“Sometimes a crumb falls
From the tables of joy,
Sometimes a bone
Is flung.

To some people
Love is given,
To others
Only heaven.”

“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.”

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

“Gather up In the arms of your love—Those who expect No love from above.”

“I wish the rent Was heaven sent.”

“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.”

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

“I stuck my head out the window this morning and spring kissed me bang in the face.”

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

“Frosting

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

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

“Dream within a dream,
Our dream deferred.
Good morning, daddy!
Ain’t you heard?”

“There’s a certain
amount of traveling
in a dream deferred.”

“The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.”

“O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath —
America will be!”

“Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.”

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

“They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed —
I, too, am America.”

“I was so sick last night I
Didn't hardly know my mind.
So sick last night I
Didn't know my mind.
I drunk some bad licker that
Almost made me blind.”