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

“You know how your mother and I met,” Dad began.
I rolled my eyes. “Everyone does. You two are practically a fairy tale.”
― Kiera Cass, quote from The Heir


“Nothing had changed. Their lives had been expended in the cheerless labor, their wills broken, their intelligences numbed. Now they were in the earth to which they had given their lives; and slowly, year by year, the earth would take them. Slowly the damp and rot woudl infest the pine boxes which held their bodies, and slowly it would touch their flesh and finally it would consume the last vestiges of their substances. And they would become a meaningless part of that stubborn earth to which they had long ago given themselves.”
― John Williams, quote from Stoner


“I should like to freeze in time all those I do love, keep them somehow safe from the ravages of the passing years..."Rather like flowers pressed between the pages of a book!”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from The Sunne in Splendour


“When you visualized a man or a woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity . . . that was a quality God's image carried with it . . . when you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The Power and the Glory


“in police work ninety-nine percent of the effort is routine, unspectacular enquiry, checking and double-checking, laboriously building up a web of parts until the parts become a whole, the whole becomes a net, and the net finally encloses the criminal with a case that will not just make headlines but stand up in court. He”
― Frederick Forsyth, quote from The Day of the Jackal


Interesting books

The Stand
(504.2K)
The Stand
by Stephen King
The Giver
(1.4M)
The Giver
by Lois Lowry
Watership Down
(322.7K)
Watership Down
by Richard Adams
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
(199K)
The Adventures of Sh...
by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Handmaid's Tale
(828.4K)
The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood
My Sister's Keeper
(0.9M)
My Sister's Keeper
by Jodi Picoult

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.