Quotes from Selected Poems

Langston Hughes ·  297 pages

Rating: (5.9K votes)


“Looks like what drives me crazy
Don't have no effect on you--
But I'm gonna keep on at it
Till it drives you crazy, too.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from Selected Poems


“Out of love,
No regrets--
Though the goodness
Be wasted forever.

Out of love,
No regrets--
Though the return
Be never.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from Selected Poems


“The sea is a desert of waves,
A wilderness of water.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from Selected Poems


“I will take your heart.
I will take your soul out of your body
As though I were God.
I will not be satisfied
With the little words you say to me.
I will not be satisfied
With the touch of your hand
Nor the sweet of your lips alone.
I will take your heart for mine.
I will take your soul.
I will be God when it comes to you.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from Selected Poems


“The speaker catches fire
looking at their faces.
His words
jump down to stand
in listener's places.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from Selected Poems



“Joe has sense enough to know
He is a god.
So many gods don't know.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from Selected Poems


About the author

Langston Hughes
Born place: in Joplin, Missouri, The United States
Born date February 1, 1902
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“A sated belly gave Americans the luxury of praising themselves for being good parents, as if caring for one's child was the exception rather than the rule.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, quote from The Thing Around Your Neck


“With the money my mother earned from selling cakes, my father cut a deal with Mangochi and bought one pail of maize. My mother took it to the mill, saved half the flour for us, and used the rest for more cakes. We did this every day, taking enough to eat and selling the rest. It was enough to provide our one blob of nsima each night, along with some pumpkin leaves. It was practically nothing, yet knowing it would be there somehow made the hunger less painful.

"As long as we can stay in business," my father said, "we'll make it through. Our profit is that we live.”
― William Kamkwamba, quote from The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope


“Nothing in American history can compare with the scale of the domestic espionage of Operation Snow White.”
― Lawrence Wright, quote from Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief


“Julia edged closer, wondering what kind of vocabulary dogs understood. Frederico Fellini, her cat, was an intellectual and she could talk about books and films to him, as long as it was after he'd been fed, and fed well. She had the vague notion that dogs preferred football and politics.”
― Lisa Marie Rice, quote from Woman on the Run


“If I was you,” I whispered in her ear, “I’d be less worried about whether or not a girl beat up my boyfriend and more concerned about why my boyfriend wasn’t with me instead.”
― Karen Lynch, quote from Relentless


Interesting books

A Long Long Way
(4.5K)
A Long Long Way
by Sebastian Barry
Yours to Keep
(13.2K)
Yours to Keep
by Shannon Stacey
The Tokyo-Montana Express
(1K)
The Tokyo-Montana Ex...
by Richard Brautigan
Wench
(14.3K)
Wench
by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Scorched Skies
(4.8K)
Scorched Skies
by Samantha Young
Testimony
(25.2K)
Testimony
by Anita Shreve

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.