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The rhythm of life is a jazz rhythm

Langston Hughes

Words Like Freedom There are words like Freedom Sweet and wonderful to say. On my heartstrings freedom sings All day everyday. There are words like Liberty That almost make me cry. If you had known what I know You would know why.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Freedom Heart Myself Sing Wonderful Word
Summer was made to give you a taste of what hell is like. Winter was made for landladies to charge high rents and keep cold radiators and make a fortune off of poor tenants.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Fortune Hell Summer Taste Winter Yourself
Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Beautiful Book Language People Suffering
Most musicians remain poor. But the music that they make, even if it does not bring them millions, gives millions of people happiness.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Happiness Music People Poor
If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Animal Be Yourself Equality Government Oppression Place Safety
A dream deferred is a dream denied.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Dreams One Liner
I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Freedom Heart Broken Myself
But there are certain very practical things American Negro writers can do. And must do. There’s a song that says, “the time ain’t long.” That song is right. Something has got to change in America-and change soon. We must help that change to come.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Change Difference Help Practical Time Transformation Writing
Gather quickly Out of darkness All the songs you know And throw them at the sun Before they melt Like snow.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Darkness Quick Snow Song Sun
Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Laughter Yourself
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.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Beautiful Children Help Honor Man Race Respect Woman Writing Young
We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren?t it doesn?t matter.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Artist Creation Darkness Expression Happiness People Skin White Young
I am a Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Black Identity Myself Personality
That Justice is a blind goddess Is a thing to which we black are wise: Her bandage hides two festering sores That once perhaps were eyes.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Black Eyes Hide Justice
When poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color, color lines and colonies, somebody tells the police.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Beginning Color Moon Poem Police Stop Talk
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.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Breathe Equality Freedom Land Liberty Life Myself Patriot
Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Death Life Live Music Note
Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Beautiful Death Escape Happiness
Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Hands Hold On Yourself
Reach Up Your Hand… and take a star.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Hands Reach Star
There’s a certain amount of traveling in a dream deferred.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Dreams Lost Travel
Love is a naked shadow, On a gnarled and naked tree.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Love Naked Shadow Tree Yourself
I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Deep Growth Human Old River Soul World
I wish the rent Was heaven sent.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Heaven Myself
I dream a world… where wretchedness will hang its head and joy, like a pearl, attends the needs of all mankind. Of such I dream, my world!
LANGSTON HUGHES

Dreams Head Kind Man Myself World
I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Believe Creative Direction Politics Reaction Success Thinking Writing
I stay cool, and dig all jive, That’s the way I stay alive. My motto, as I live and learn, is Dig and be dug In return.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Alive Learning Myself Return Stay

The rhythm of life is a jazz rhythm

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