Quote

Rest at pale evening... A tall slim tree... Night coming tenderly Black like me

Langston Hughes

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Langston Hughes
Age: 66 †
Born: 1901
Born: February 1
Died: 1967
Died: May 22
Biographer
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Writer
Joplin
Missouri
James Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes
Coming
Rest
Tree
Black
Tenderly
Night
Slim
Like
Pale
Tall
Evening

More quotes by Langston Hughes

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This is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America - this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.
Langston Hughes
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When poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color, color lines and colonies, somebody tells the police.
Langston Hughes
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Words Like Freedom There are words like Freedom Sweet and wonderful to say. On my heartstrings freedom sings All day everyday. There are words like Liberty That almost make me cry. If you had known what I know You would know why.
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Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it ... what you wish in your secret heart were not funny, but it is, and you must laugh. Humor is your own unconscious therapy. Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air, and you.
Langston Hughes
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We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren?t it doesn?t matter.
Langston Hughes
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Both of them were very good and kind - the one who went to church and the one who didn't. And no doubt from them I learned to like both Christians and sinners equally well.
Langston Hughes
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It is the duty of the younger Negro artist . . . to change through the force of his art that old whispering I want to be white, hidden in the aspirations of his people, to Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro - and beautiful!
Langston Hughes
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Whiskey just naturally likes me but beer likes me better.
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Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.
Langston Hughes
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Because my mouth Is wide with laughter And my throat Is deep with song, You do not think I suffer after I have held my pain So long? Because my mouth Is wide with laughter You do not hear My inner cry? Because my feet Are gay with dancing You do not know I die?
Langston Hughes
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I do not want no pretty woman. First thing you know, you fall in love with her-then you got to kill somebody about her. She'll make you so jealous, you'll bust!
Langston Hughes
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If you want to honor me, give some young boy or girl who's coming along trying to create arts and write and compose and sing and act and paint and dance and make something out of the beauties of the Negro race-give that child some help.
Langston Hughes
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The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negroes had but few pegs to fall.
Langston Hughes
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I got the Weary Blues And I can't be satisfied.
Langston Hughes
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Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.
Langston Hughes
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Money and art are far apart.
Langston Hughes
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They [the police] learned something from them Harlem riots. They used to beat your head right in public, but now they only beat it after they get you down to the station house.
Langston Hughes
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Your explanation depresses me, I said. Your nonsense depresses me, said Simple.
Langston Hughes
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What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? ... Or does it explode?
Langston Hughes
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Misery is when you heard on the radio that the neighborhood you live in is a slum but you always thought it was home.
Langston Hughes