Best 156 quotes of Langston Hughes on MyQuotes

A dog gets lonesome just like a human. He wants to associate with other dogs, but when they take him out, the poor dog is on a leash and cannot run around.

A dream deferred is a dream denied.

Americans of good-will, the nice decent church people, the well-meaning liberals, the good hearted souls who themselves wouldn't lynch anyone, must begin to realize that they have to be more than passively good-hearted, more than church goingly Christian, and much more than word-of-mouth in the liberalism.

An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.

Anyday, one can walk down the street in a big city and see a thousand people. Any photographer can photograph these people - but very few photographers can make their prints not only reproductions of the people taken, but a comment upon them - or more, a comment upon their lives - or more still, a comment upon the social order that creates these lives.

A picture, to be an interesting picture, must be more than a picture, otherwise it is only a reproduction of an object, and not an object of value in itself.

As long as what is is-and Georgia is Georgia-I will take Harlem for mine. At least, if trouble comes, I will have my own window to shoot from.

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

Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.

Because my mouth Is wide with laughter And my throat Is deep with song, You do not think I suffer after I have held my pain So long? Because my mouth Is wide with laughter You do not hear My inner cry? Because my feet Are gay with dancing You do not know I die?

Believing everything she read In the daily news, (No in-between to choose) She thought that only One side won, Not that BOTH Might lose.

Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.

Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas

Both of them were very good and kind - the one who went to church and the one who didn't. And no doubt from them I learned to like both Christians and sinners equally well.

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.

Cheap little rhymes A cheap little tune Are sometimes as dangerous As a sliver of the moon.

Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear.

Don't come giving me, who's old enough to die and too near blind to create anything any more anyhow, a great big banquet that you eat up in honor of your own stomachs as much as in honor of me- who's toothless and can't eat.

Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along.

Everything there is but lovin' leaves a rust on your old soul

Folks, I'm telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean- so get yourself a little loving in between.

For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn't write anything.

For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.

Gather out of star-dust, Earth-dust, Cloud-dust, Storm-dust, And splinters of hail, One handful of dream-dust, Not for sale.

Gather quickly Out of darkness All the songs you know And throw them at the sun Before they melt Like snow.

Gather up In the arms of your love—Those who expect No love from above.

Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you - / Then, it will be true.

Good evening, daddy! Ain't you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? Trilling the treble And twining the bass Into midnight ruffles Of cat-gut lace.

Good morning, daddy! Ain't you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? Listen closely: You'll hear their feet Beating out and beating out a - You think It's a happy beat? Listen to it closely: Ain't you heard something underneath like a - What did I say? Sure, I'm happy! Take it away! Dream Boogie Hey, pop! Re-bop! Mop! Y-e-a-h!

Good morning, daddy! Ain't you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? • • • • You think It's a happy beat?

Good morning, Revolution: You're the very best friend I ever had. We gonna pal around together from now on

Hard as I try, daddy-o, I really do not like concert singers. They are always singing in some foreign language.

How still, How strangely still The water is today, It is not good For water To be so still that way. ~ "Sea Calm

Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.

Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it ... what you wish in your secret heart were not funny, but it is, and you must laugh. Humor is your own unconscious therapy. Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air, and you.

Humor is when the joke's on you but hits the other fellow first -- before it boomerangs.

I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.

I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes, but I laugh, and eat well, and grow strong.

I asked you, baby, If you understood- You told me that you didn't, But you thought you would.

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.

I do not want no pretty woman. First thing you know, you fall in love with her-then you got to kill somebody about her. She'll make you so jealous, you'll bust!

I don't dare start thinking in the morning. I don't dare start thinking in the morning. If I thought thoughts in bed, Them thoughts would bust my head-- So I don't dare start thinking in the morning.

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!

I felt very bad in Washington. . . I didn't like my job, and I didn't know what was going to happen to me, and I was cold and half-hungry, so I wrote a great many poems.

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.

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.

I got the Weary Blues And I can't be satisfied.

I know how to handle women who act like ladies, but my landlady ain't no lady. Sometimes I even wish I was living with my wife again so I could have my own place and not have no landladies.

I look at my own body With eyes no longer blind- And I see that my own hands can make The world that's in my mind.

I'm so tired of waiting, aren't you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?