“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
“first, he called idiot savant. The type of person who is so smart in his or her field of expertise that their mind is literally elsewhere. In layman’s terms he explained that these people were smart in school and dumb on the bus. The second category was made up of perfectionists, people who were incapable of letting go of one task and moving on to another. These people were always playing catch-up, rarely rose to any real position of power, and needed to be managed properly. The third category, and the one to be most wary of, were the egomaniacs. These were the people who not only felt that their time was more important than anyone else’s, but who needed to prove it by constantly making others wait”
― Vince Flynn, quote from Act of Treason
“It was a kind of circular thing: to be the kind of person who would have taken Faith in, he had to be the kind of person who would take her back.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Blessings
“She keeps on hoping from a word from Penelope, but not in any strenuous way. She hopes as people who know better hope for undeserved blessings, spontaneous remissions, things of that sort.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“I don't think I'd mind working on a cheese counter. It would leave my mind free to do whatever it wanted - which is nothing in particular, it's true, but I like being alone in my head, I'm used to it.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Human Croquet
“That the door fell shut, that the latch fell into place, did I know it with a nameless fear. At that second the eight days turned into 192 hours, empty caged hours.”
― Victor Klemperer, quote from I Will Bear Witness 1933-41 A Diary of the Nazi Years
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.
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