Quotes by Langston Hughes

About Langston Hughes:

James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

It is strange how often a heart must be broken Before the years can make it wise.

Langston Hughes

The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

Langston Hughes

How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true; But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

Langston Hughes

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Of those...

Langston Hughes

If you dissect a bird / to diagram the tongue, / you'll cut the chord / articulating song.

Langston Hughes

When you are old and grey and full of sleep And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep

Langston Hughes

In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: “Live in the layers, not on the litter.” Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformatio...

Langston Hughes

Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Langston Hughes

Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said It was the dream itself enchanted me ("The Circus Animal's Desertion")

Langston Hughes

O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?

Langston Hughes

I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me.

Langston Hughes

In tombs of gold and lapis lazuli Bodies of holy men and women exude Miraculous oil, odour of violet. But under heavy loads of trampled clay Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood; Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet ("Oil and Blood")

Langston Hughes

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

Langston Hughes

I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the d...

Langston Hughes

The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper, Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars Letting in the light, peephole after peephole--- A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.

Langston Hughes

Not easy to state the change you made. If I'm alive now, I was dead, Though, like a stone, unbothered by it.

Langston Hughes

Before me floats an image, man or shade, Shade more than man, more image than a shade; For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth May unwind the winding path; A mouth that has no moisture and no breath Breathless mouths may summon; ("Byzantium")

Langston Hughes

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

Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die life is a broken-winged bird that can not fly. Hold fast to dreams for when dreams go life is a barren field frozen with snow.

Langston Hughes

Although, I admit, I desire, Occasionally, some backtalk From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain: A certain minor light may still Lean incandescent Out of kitchen table or chair As if a celestial burning took Possession of the most obtuse object...

Langston Hughes

THAT crazed girl improvising her music. Her poetry, dancing upon the shore, Her soul in division from itself Climbing, falling She knew not where, Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship, Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare A beautiful lofty thing,...

Langston Hughes

Author Bio

  • NameLangston Hughes
  • DescriptionAmerican writer and social activist
  • BornFebruary 1, 1902
  • DiedMay 22, 1967
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPoet; Novelist; Playwright; Essayist; Writer
  • WorksThe Negro Speaks Of Rivers
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship; Spingarn Medal; Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards; William E. Harmon Foundation Award For Distinguished Achievement Among Negroes