Langston Hughes
For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn't write anything.Collection: Writing
Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Powerful
I will not take "but" for an answer.Collection: Attitude
Life is a system of half-truths and lies, Opportunistic, convenient evasion.Collection: Inspirational Life
It has seemed to me that most people are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have been.Collection: Country
Teach us all to do right, Lord, please, and to get along together with that atom bomb on this earth because I do not want it to fall on me-nor Thee-nor anybody living. Amen!Collection: Fall
When you turn the corner And you run into yourself Then you know that you have turned All the corners that are left.Collection: Running
Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.Collection: Hands
I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes, but I laugh, and eat well, and grow strong.Collection: Strong
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again!Collection: Lying
Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be.Collection: Dream
Gather up In the arms of your love—Those who expect No love from above.Collection: Arms
Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.Collection: Music
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.Collection: Believe
There is no color line in art.Collection: Color
I am a Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa.Collection: Night
We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.Collection: Beautiful
Misery is when you heard on the radio that the neighborhood you live in is a slum but you always thought it was home.Collection: Home
I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I've known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.Collection: Sleep
The rhythm of life is a jazz rhythmCollection: Rhythm Of Life
Money and art are far apart.Collection: Art
If you want to honor me, give some young boy or girl who's coming along trying to create arts and write and compose and sing and act and paint and dance and make something out of the beauties of the Negro race-give that child some help.Collection: Girl
I dream a world... where wretchedness will hang its head and joy, like a pearl, attends the needs of all mankind. Of such I dream, my world!Collection: Dream
Road's in front o' me, Nothin' to do but walk.Collection: Walks
Gather out of star-dust, Earth-dust, Cloud-dust, Storm-dust, And splinters of hail, One handful of dream-dust, Not for sale.Collection: Dream
O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.Collection: Real
Americans of good-will, the nice decent church people, the well-meaning liberals, the good hearted souls who themselves wouldn't lynch anyone, must begin to realize that they have to be more than passively good-hearted, more than church goingly Christian, and much more than word-of-mouth in the liberalism.Collection: Christian
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.Collection: Sleep
Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear.Collection: Years
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?Collection: Running
Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you - / Then, it will be true.Collection: Home
I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.Collection: Freedom
Because my mouth Is wide with laughter And my throat Is deep with song, You do not think I suffer after I have held my pain So long? Because my mouth Is wide with laughter You do not hear My inner cry? Because my feet Are gay with dancing You do not know I die?Collection: Song
There is no color line in death. I swear to the lord I still can't see Why Democracy means Everybody but me. O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath - America will be! I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.Collection: Mean
Oh, God of Dust and Rainbows, Help us to see That without the dust the rainbow Would not be.Collection: Dust
LIBERTY! FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY! True anyhow no matter how many Liars use those words.Collection: Liars
Well, son, I'll tell you: Life for me ain't been no crystal stair. It's had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor -- Bare. But all the time I'se been a-climbin' on, And reachin' landin's, And turnin' corners, And sometimes goin' in the dark Where there ain't been no light. So boy, don't you turn back. Don't you set down on the steps 'Cause you finds it's kinder hard. Don't you fall now -- For I'se still goin', honey, I'se still climbin', And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.Collection: Fall
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.Collection: Alive
America never was America to me And yet I swear this oath - America will be!Collection: America
Life is an egg you have to be patient and careful with it or it will break.Collection: Eggs
I wish the rent Was heaven sent.Collection: Heaven Sent
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.Collection: Crazy
If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed.Collection: Rights
When poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color, color lines and colonies, somebody tells the police.Collection: Moon
In the spring rain, the pond and the river become one. Into every life some rain must fall. Usually when your car windows are down. It raineth on the Just and the Unjust Alike, But the Unjust stealeth the Just's umbrella Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.Collection: Spring
I asked you, baby, If you understood- You told me that you didn't, But you thought you would.Collection: Baby
Harriet Tubman lived to see the harvest.Collection: Harvest