Quote

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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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
Song
Inner
Mouth
Long
Cry
Held
Think
Deep
Suffer
Thinking
Feet
Gay
Hear
Mouths
Dies
Wide
Suffering
Dancing
Pain
Laughter
Throat

More quotes by Langston Hughes

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Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again!
Langston Hughes
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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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For poems are like rainbows they escape you quickly.
Langston Hughes
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Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.
Langston Hughes
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Negroes - Sweet and docile, Meek, humble, and kind: Beware the day - They change their mind.
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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I got the Weary Blues And I can't be satisfied.
Langston Hughes
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When I were a young man, I used to play baseball and steal bases just like Jackie Robinson. If the empire would rule me out, I would get mad and hit the empire.
Langston Hughes
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When a man starts out to build a world, He starts first with himself
Langston Hughes
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For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn't write anything.
Langston Hughes
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Your explanation depresses me, I said. Your nonsense depresses me, said Simple.
Langston Hughes
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To some people Love is given, To others Only Heaven.
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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Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.
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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Americans of good-will, the nice decent church people, the well-meaning liberals, the good hearted souls who themselves wouldn't lynch anyone, must begin to realize that they have to be more than passively good-hearted, more than church goingly Christian, and much more than word-of-mouth in the liberalism.
Langston Hughes
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Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.
Langston Hughes
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Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
Langston Hughes
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Harriet Tubman lived to see the harvest.
Langston Hughes
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Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.-
Langston Hughes