James Weldon Johnson Quotes

48 quotes in 849 categories

• 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…
• And so for a couple of years my life was divided between my music and my school books.
• As I look back now I can see that I was a perfect little aristocrat.
• But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of…
• Southern white people despise the Negro as a race, and will do nothing to aid in his elevation as such; but for certain individuals they…
• In Berlin I especially enjoyed the orchestral concerts, and I attended a large number of them. I formed the acquaintance of a good many musicians,…
• My appearance was always good and my ability to play on the piano, especially ragtime, which was then at the height of its vogue, made…
• We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.
• Through my music teaching and my not absolutely irregular attendance at church, I became acquainted with the best class of colored people in Jacksonville.
• 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…
• When we arrived in London, my sadness at leaving Paris was turned into despair. After my long stay in the French capital, huge, ponderous, massive…
• 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…
• When one has seen something of the world and human nature, one must conclude, after all, that between people in like stations of life there…
• Lift every voice and sing Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty. Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies;…
• Every race and every nation should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst.
• My mother was kept very busy with her sewing; sometimes she would have another woman helping her.
• I had enjoyed life in Paris, and, taking all things into consideration, enjoyed it wholesomely.
• There are a great many colored people who are ashamed of the cake-walk, but I think they ought to be proud of it.
• 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…

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