“Then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone.”

The young moon has fed Her exhausted horn With the sunset’s fire.

History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.

Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal.

Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age.

Love’s very pain is sweet.

A single word even may be a spark of inextinguishable thought.

Sing again, with your dear voice revealing. A tone Of some world far from ours, where music and moonlight and feeling are one.

Hell is a city much like London A populous and smoky city.

All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth.

A sensitive plant in a garden grew, And the young winds fed it with silver dew, And it opened its fan like leaves to the light, and closed them beneath the kisses of night.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.

See the mountains kiss high Heaven And the waves clasp one another; No sister-flower would be forgiven If it disdained its brother; And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea – What is all this sweet work worth If thou kiss not me?

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.

O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?

The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.

Strange thoughts beget strange deeds.

Since stepping reluctantly into public life, I’ve been held up as the most powerful woman in the world and taken down as an angry black woman. I’ve wanted to ask my detractors which part of that phrase matters to them the most—is it angry or black or woman ?

It isn’t a matter of black is beautiful as much as it is white is not all that’s beautiful.

I was’nt always black. There was this freckel that just grew and grew.

The realities are that, you know, as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station, you know.

It’s remarkable how a stereotype functions as an actual trap. How many angry black women have been caught in the circular logic of that phrase? When you aren’t being listened to, why wouldn’t you get louder? If you’re written off as angry or emotional, doesn’t that just cause more of the same?

I’m not black, but there’s a whole lot of times I wish I could say I’m not white.

Be Black, buy Black, think Black, and all else will take care of itself.

I have no desire to take all black people back to Africa; there are blacks who are no good here and will likewise be no good there.