Quotes · Skopia

10 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Place·Lawrence✕clear

Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.

Langston Hughes

1936

★ 2.0

Autobiography and memoir

For poems are like rainbows: they escape you quickly.

Langston Hughes

1940

★ 2.2

Poem · Magazine

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

Langston Hughes

The Negro Speaks of Rivers · 1921

★ 3.6

I am a Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa.

Langston Hughes

1926

★ 3.7

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

1921

★ 5.3

Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.

Langston Hughes

Dreams · 1923

★ 5.3

O, let America be America again— The land that never has been yet— And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

Langston Hughes

1936

★ 5.5

I swear to the Lord I still can't see Why Democracy means Everybody but me.

Langston Hughes

The Black Man Speaks · 1943

★ 6.2

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore - And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over - like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes

Harlem · 1951

★ 6.9

I, too, sing America. 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. Tomorrow, I'll be at the table When company comes. Nobody'll dare Say to me, "Eat in the kitchen" Then. Besides, They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed— I, too, am America.

Langston Hughes

I, Too · 1926

★ 7.0