“You’ll be free or die!”

Farewell, ole Maser, don’t think hard of me, I’m going on to Canada, where all the slaves are free.

Every great dream begins with a dreamer.

It wasn’t me, it was the Lord! I always told Him, ‘I trust to you. I don’t know where to go or what to do, but I expect You to lead me,’ and He always did.

I can’t die but once.

I said to the Lord, I’m going to hold steady on to you, and I know you will see me through.

I think slavery is the next thing to hell. If a person would send another into bondage, he would, it appears to me, be bad enough to send him into hell if he could.

The good Lord has come down to deliver my people, and I must go and help him.

God’s time is always near. He gave me my strength and he set the North Star in the heavens; He meant I should be free.

I am at peace with God and all mankind.

Marcus Garvey had in their times. We just had a more vulnerable enemy.

Quakers almost as good as colored. They call themselves friends and you can trust them every time.

I have heard their groans and sighs, and seen their tears, and I would give every drop of blood in my veins to free them.

I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was on of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive.

I had crossed the line. I was free; but, there was no one there to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land.

I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person.

Most of those coming from the mainland are very destitute, almost naked.

We are born for love, but it will die if not nurtured.

That’s part of what I like about the book in some ways. It portrays death truthfully. You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence.

When you die, you die. You don’t think which is the better way to die.

Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.

Let me rage before I die.

The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend as to find a friend worth dying for.

I paint flowers so they will not die.

Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.