And so for a couple of years my life was divided between my music and my school books..

Some men enjoy the constant strife Of days with work and worry rife, But that is not my dream of life: I think such men are crazy. For me, a life wit….

And God stepped out on space, and He looked around and said: I'm lonely - I'll make me a world..

...one of the best things about running is that no matter how fast you've run in the past, running fast in the future does not come easily or with an….

I am a thing not new, I am as old As human nature. I am that which lurks, Ready to spring whenever a bar is loosed; The ancient trait which fights in….

Southern white people despise the Negro as a race, and will do nothing to aid in his elevation as such; but for certain individuals they have a stron….

I found cause to wonder upon what ground the English accuse Americans of corrupting the language by introducing slang words. I think I heard more and….

Northern white people love the Negro in a sort of abstract way, as a race; through a sense of justice, charity, and philanthropy, they will liberally….

O Black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?.

Amsterdam was a great surprise to me. I had always thought of Venice as the city of canals; it had never entered my mind that I should find similar c….

The battle was first waged over the right of the Negro to be classed as a human being with a soul; later, as to whether he had sufficient intellect t….

The peculiar fascination which the South held over my imagination and my limited capital decided me in favor of Atlanta University; so about the last….

...evil is a force and, like the physical and chemical forces, we cannot annihilate it; we may only change its form. We light upon one evil and hit i….

This Great God, Like a mammy bending over her baby, Kneeled down in the dust Toiling over a lump of clay Till He shaped it in His own image..

Nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best he gives to the….

You are young, gifted, and Black. We must begin to tell our young, There's a world waiting for you, Yours is the quest that's just begun..

A great wave of humiliation and shame swept over me. Shame that I belonged to a race that could be so dealt with; and shame for my country, that it, ….

Through my music teaching and my not absolutely irregular attendance at church, I became acquainted with the best class of colored people in Jacksonv….

Every race and every nation should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst..

I thought of Paris as a beauty spot on the face of the earth, and of London as a big freckle..

But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in ….