Taint no law on earth dat kin make a man be decent if it aint in ’im.
Tell me, and then again show me, so I can know.
Everybody is two beings: one lives and flourishes in the daylight and stands guard. The other being walks and howls at night.
Everybody has some special road of thought along which they travel when they are alone to themselves. And his road of thought is what makes every man what he is.
Folklore is the boiled-down juice, or pot-likker, of human living.
They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down.
Lack of power and opportunity passes off too often for virtue.
She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen.
She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.
I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads.
Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear, and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom.
I regret all of my books.
I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.
I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That’s living.
Light came to me when I realized that I did not have to consider any racial group as a whole. God made them duck by duck and that was the only way I could see them.
We must learn to be honest with ourselves, and know our shortcomings. We will acquire cohesion but we will pay dearly for being a slow pupil.
A great state is a well-blended mash of something of all the people and all of none of the people. The liquor of statecraft is distilled from the mash you got.
Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept.
It is hard to apply oneself to study when there is no money to pay for food and lodging. I almost never explain these things when folks are asking me why I don’t do this or that.
Oh to be a pear tree – any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world!