“Sluggish idleness–the nurse of sin.”

Be bold, and everywhere be bold.

Unhappie Verse, the witnesse of my unhappie state, Make thy selfe fluttring wings of thy fast flying Thought.

I was promised on a time To have reason for my rhyme; From that time unto this season, I received nor rhyme nor reason.

All for love, and nothing for reward.

Fresh spring the herald of love’s mighty king.

Joy may you have and gentle hearts content Of your loves couplement: And let faire Venus, that is Queene of love, With her heart-quelling Sonne upon you smile

All flesh doth frailty breed!

All that in this delightful garden grows should happy be and have immortal bliss.

So let us love, dear Love, like as we ought; Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.

Beauty is not, as fond men misdeem, an outward show of things that only seem.

My Love is like to ice, and I to fire: How comes it then that this her cold so great Is not dissolved through my so hot desire, But harder grows the more I her entreat?

In vain he seeketh others to suppress, Who hath not learn’d himself first to subdue.

Ah! when will this long weary day have end, And lende me leave to come unto my love? – Epithalamion

The man whom nature’s self had made to mock herself, and truth to imitate.

And he that strives to touch the stars Oft stumbles at a straw.

For that which all men then did virtue call, Is now called vice; and that which vice was hight, Is now hight virtue, and so used of all: Right now is wrong, and wrong that was is right.

Expectations are the mental prison. Free your mind with no expectations.

For a people is only as great, as free, as lofty, as advanced as its women are free, noble and progressive.

I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.

I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.

Every time I embrace a black woman I’m embracing slavery, and when I put my arms around a white woman, well, I’m hugging freedom.

The silver trump of freedom roused in my soul eternal wakefulness.

All I want is the freedom to be myself.

Our greatest human freedom is that, despite whatever our physical situation is in life, we are always free to choose our thoughts.