I find, in being black, a thing of beauty: a joy; a strength; a secret cup of gladness.
Interpretation
This quote expresses pride and joy in one's identity and heritage.
Ossie Davis highlights the intrinsic beauty and strength found in being black, suggesting that this identity brings a unique joy and an inner gladness that can be both a source of strength and a celebratory secret. It speaks to the resilience and positivity that can arise from embracing one's cultural identity.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech celebrating cultural diversity.
Here - at this final hour, Harlem has come to bid farewell to one of its brightest hopes - extinguished now, and gone from us forever.... Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy, controversial and bold young captain - and we will smile. ...We will answer and say unto them, ‘Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever really listen to him? ...For if you did you would know him. And if you knew him you would know why we must honor him.'
Of mortals there is no one who is happy. If wealth flows in upon one, one may be perhaps luckier than one's neighbor, but still not happy.
One thing is certain: you can never become anything other than yourself, and unless you become yourself you cannot be happy. Happiness happens only when a rosebush grows roseflowers; when it flowers, when it has its own individuality. You may be a rosebush and trying to flower as lotus flower - that is creating insanity. Erase the mind. And the way to erase it is not by fight: the way to erase it is just to become aware.
In my 20s I was such a serious, boring-looking person. I would never do my nails. I never even danced. But I was taught by the women. They had gone through hell, but they would dance and sing. I came to realise I can't argue for a happy world if I am not happy myself.
We don’t need more money, we don’t need greater success or fame, we don’t need the perfect body or even the perfect mate-right now, at this very moment, we have a mind, which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness.
If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf.
Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves.
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