“I tire so of hearing people say, Let things take their course. Tomorrow is another day. I do not need my freedom when I’m dead. I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.”

Never look for a worm in the apple of your eye.

A picture, to be an interesting picture, must be more than a picture, otherwise it is only a reproduction of an object, and not an object of value in itself.

Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it.

I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.

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

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

The calm, Cool face of the river, Asked me for a kiss.

I don’t dare start thinking in the morning. I don’t dare start thinking in the morning. If I thought thoughts in bed, Them thoughts would bust my head– So I don’t dare start thinking in the morning.

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.

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.

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

Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

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

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.

Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables.

I look at my own body With eyes no longer blind- And I see that my own hands can make The world that’s in my mind.

I come as a full course meal, I will no longer hand myself out like a menu and wait for people to pick me out.

The connections we make in the course of a life, maybe that’s what heaven is.

A government must not waiver once it has chosen its course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.

I’m telling you that India is that way, now set my course.

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

Sexual intercourse is a slight attack of apoplexy.

A leader, once convinced a particular course of action is the right one, must have the determination to stick with it and be undaunted when the going gets tough.

Reading has changed the course of my life radically. I did not aim behind it to gain any certificates to improve my position. Rather, I wanted to live intellectually.