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O Black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
James Weldon Johnson
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James Weldon Johnson
Age: 67 †
Born: 1871
Born: June 17
Died: 1938
Died: June 26
Author
Composer
Diplomat
Jurist
Lawyer
Novelist
Poet
Politician
Songwriter
Writer
Jacksonville
Florida
J. W. Johnson
Touch
Sacred
Fire
Came
Black
Music
Bards
Long
Unknown
Lips
More quotes by James Weldon Johnson
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.
James Weldon Johnson
...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 it with all the might of our civilization, but only succeed in scattering it into a dozen of other forms
James Weldon Johnson
When we arrived in London, my sadness at leaving Paris was turned into despair. After my long stay in the French capital, huge, ponderous, massive London seemed to me as ugly a thing as man could contrive to make.
James Weldon Johnson
I thought of Paris as a beauty spot on the face of the earth, and of London as a big freckle.
James Weldon Johnson
At a very early age I began to thump on the piano alone, and it was not long before I was able to pick out a few tunes? I also learned the names of the notes in both clefs, but I preferred not be hampered by notes.
James Weldon Johnson
And so for a couple of years my life was divided between my music and my school books.
James Weldon Johnson
There are a great many colored people who are ashamed of the cake-walk, but I think they ought to be proud of it.
James Weldon Johnson
It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.
James Weldon Johnson
My luck at the gambling table was varied sometimes I was fifty to a hundred dollars ahead, and at other times I had to borrow money from my fellow workmen to settle my room rent and pay for my meals.
James Weldon Johnson
This country can have no more democracy than it accords and guarantees to the humblest and weakest citizen.
James Weldon Johnson
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 of September I bade farewell to the friends and scenes of my boyhood and boarded a train for the South.
James Weldon Johnson
My mother was kept very busy with her sewing sometimes she would have another woman helping her.
James Weldon Johnson
...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 any guarantees.
James Weldon Johnson
Americans are immensely popular in Paris and this is not due solely to the fact that they spend lots of money there, for they spend just as much or more in London, and in the latter city they are merely tolerated because they do spend.
James Weldon Johnson
Lift every voice and sing Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty. Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
James Weldon Johnson
As I look back now I can see that I was a perfect little aristocrat.
James Weldon Johnson
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 classic musical form.
James Weldon Johnson
And Satan smiled, stretched out his hand, and said, O War, of all the scourges of humanity, I crown you chief.
James Weldon Johnson
The Southern whites are in many respects a great people. Looked at from a certain point of view, they are picturesque. If one will put oneself in a romantic frame of mind, one can admire their notions of chivalry and bravery and justice.
James Weldon Johnson
And God stepped out on space, and He looked around and said: I'm lonely - I'll make me a world.
James Weldon Johnson
