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I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.

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
American
Freedom
Stumped
Heartbreak
Toes
Rock
Rocks

More quotes by 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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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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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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LIBERTY! FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY! True anyhow no matter how many Liars use those words.
Langston Hughes
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Though you may hear me holler, And you may see me cry-- I'll be dogged, sweet baby, If you gonna see me die.
Langston Hughes
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There's a certain amount of traveling in a dream deferred.
Langston Hughes
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I felt very bad in Washington. . . I didn't like my job, and I didn't know what was going to happen to me, and I was cold and half-hungry, so I wrote a great many poems.
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
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My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
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
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Life for me ain't been no crystal stair
Langston Hughes
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So since I'm still here livin', I guess I will live on. I could've died for love-- But for livin' I was born.
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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Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.
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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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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Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear.
Langston Hughes
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I loved my friend He went away from me There's nothing more to say The poem ends, Soft as it began- I loved my friend.
Langston Hughes
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Life is a big sea full of many fish. I let down my nets and pulled. I'm still pulling.
Langston Hughes
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I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Langston Hughes