Quotes by James Weldon Johnson

“There were two immediate results of my forced loneliness: I began to find company in books, and greater pleasure in music.”

“In the life of everyone there is a limited number of experiences which are not written upon the memory, but stamped there with a die; and in the long years after, they can be called up in detail, a...”

“Its no disgrace to be black, but its often very inconvenient.”

“American musicians, instead of investigating ragtime, attempt to ignore it, or dismiss it with a contemptuous word. But that has always been the course of scholasticism in every branch of art. What...”

“Whose starboard eyeSaw chariot 'swing low'?”

“The battle was first waged over the right of the Negro to be classed as a human being with a soul; later, as to whether he had sufficient intellect to master even the rudiments of learning; and tod...”

“Young man, young man, your arm's too short to box with God.”

“Amsterdam was a great surprise to me. I had always thought of Venice as the city of canals it had never entered my mind that I should find similar conditions in a Dutch town. ”

“I thought of Paris as a beauty spot on the face of the earth, and of London as a big freckle.”

“The peculiar fascination which the South held over my imagination and my limited capital decided me in favor of Atlanta University so about the last of September I bade farewell to the friends and ...”

“My luck at the gambling table was varied; sometimes I was fifty to a hundred dollars ahead, and at other times I had to borrow money from my fellow workmen to settle my room rent and pay for my meals.”

“The Southern whites are in many respects a great people. Looked at from a certain point of view, they are picturesque. If one will put oneself in a romantic frame of mind, one can admire their noti...”

“The fact is, nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best that he gives to the world he gathers from the hea...”

“New York City is the most fatally fascinating thing in America. She sits like a great witch at the gate of the country, showing her alluring white face, and hiding her crooked hands and feet under ...”

“O black and unknown bards of long ago How came your lips to touch the sacred fire? How in your darkness did you come to know The power and beauty of the minstrel's lyre?”

“It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.”

“O black and unknown bards of long ago How came your lips to touch the sacred fire? How in your darkness did you come to know The power and beauty of the minstrel's lyre?”

“Lift every voice and singTill earth and heaven ring,Ring with the harmonies of Liberty.Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies;Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.”

“We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.”

“The colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.”