“The howl of self-interest is loud but the heart is black which throbs solely to its note.”

O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?

The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.

Strange thoughts beget strange deeds.

And Spring arose on the garden fair, Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere; And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.

Nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon.

Man who man would be, must rule the empire of himself.

I love snow, snow, and all the forms of radiant frost.

If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced.

The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

In fact, truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.

First our pleasures die – and then our hopes, and then our fears – and when these are dead, the debt is due dust claims dust – and we die too.

I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!

Before man can be free, and equal, and truly wise, he must cast aside the chains of habit and superstition; he must strip sensuality of its pomp, and selfishness of its excuses, and contemplate actions and objects as they really are.

Familiar acts are beautiful through love.

When the power of imparting joy is equal to the will, the human soul requires no other heaven.

A world I dream where black or white, Whatever race you be, Will share the bounties of the Earth And every man is free.

Don’t let anyone call you a minority if you’re black or Hispanic or belong to some other ethnic group. You’re not less than anybody else.

What I’m fighting for now in my work… for an expression relevant to all manner of blacks, poems I could take into a tavern, into the street, into the halls of a housing project.

You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted!

I know that the Black emphasis must be not against white but FOR Black.

Human nature is not black and white but black and grey.

We all require and want respect, man or woman, black or white. It’s our basic human right.

The spectral density of black body radiation; represents something absolute, and since the search for the absolutes has always appeared to me to be the highest form of research, I applied myself vigorously to its solution.