The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one’s own human failing.
RALPH ELLISONMan’s hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.
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I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.
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Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question.
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All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
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The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.
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I blundered into writing.
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I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of it all, I find that I love.
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The antidote to hubris, to overweening pride, is irony, that capacity to discover and systematize ideas.
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The truth is the light and the light is the truth.
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I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms.
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And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals.
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Education is all a matter of building bridges.
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the world is just as concrete, ornery, vile, and sublimely wonderful as before, only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me.
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You start Saul, and end up Paul,’ my grandfather had often said. ‘When you’re a youngun, you Saul, but let life whup your head a bit and you starts to trying to be Paul – though you still Sauls around on the side.
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The clock ticked with empty urgency, as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled.
RALPH ELLISON






