Quotes from The Collected Poems

Langston Hughes ·  736 pages

Rating: (14.6K votes)


Harlem

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, quote from The Collected Poems


“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, quote from The Collected Poems


“To some people
Love is given,
To others
Only Heaven.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from The Collected Poems


“America is a dream.
The poet says it was promises.
The people say it is promises—that will come true.
The people do not always say things out loud,
Nor write them down on paper.
The people often hold
Great thoughts in their deepest hearts
And sometimes only blunderingly express them,
Haltingly and stumbling say them,
And faultily put them into practice.
The people do not always understand each other.
But there is, somewhere there,
Always the trying to understand,
And the trying to say,
"You are a man. Together we are building our land.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from The Collected Poems


“Gather up In the arms of your love—Those who expect No love from above.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from The Collected Poems



“I wish the rent Was heaven sent.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from The Collected Poems


“7 x 7 + love = An amount Infinitely above: 7 x 7 - love.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from The Collected Poems


“The past has been a mint Of blood and sorrow. That must not be True of tomorrow.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from The Collected Poems


“Life dosent frighten me at all.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from The Collected Poems


“Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you - / Then, it will be true.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from The Collected Poems



“Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from The Collected 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

“I thought that exile meant you had to leave your country and you could go anywhere--somewhere in the sun, a tropical island, say, or America. But exile doesn't mean that; it means you are banished to a specific place, and guess what, that place isn't in the sun and is no paradise, it's not even America. It's some cold, miserable place like Siberia, where you don't know anyone and you can barely survive. It's another prison.”
― Sally Green, quote from Half Bad


“You told me it was a mistake to fight the scarred warriors. They were the survivors.”
― Michael Scott, quote from The Necromancer


“We were born to run; we were born because we run.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“Jake leaned on the horn, swearing loudly. Gina covered her eyes. Doc flung his arms around me, burying his face in my lap, and Dopey, to my great surprise, began to scream like a girl, very close to my ear....”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Reunion


“At least she had a clear picture of what the Lying Game was now: Girl Scouts for psychopaths.”
― Sara Shepard, quote from The Lying Game


Interesting books

Half Way Home
(10.9K)
Half Way Home
by Hugh Howey
Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder
(5.1K)
The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century
(13.4K)
The Time Traveller's...
by Ian Mortimer
The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister
(6.9K)
The Secret Holocaust...
by Nonna Bannister
The Reluctant Heiress
(7.1K)
The Reluctant Heires...
by Eva Ibbotson
Tempest
(12.1K)
Tempest
by Julie Cross

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.