A reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure until he knows whether the writer of it be a black man or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor.
If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat.
There is a kind of strength that is almost frightening in black women. It's as if a steel rod runs right through the head down to the feet.
Candida me docuit nigras odisse puellas. Odero si potero. Si non, invitus amabo. A white girl instructed me to hate black girls. I shall hate them if I can. If not, I shall love themagainst my will.
Black is beautiful.
Black power.
My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child, But I am black as if bereaved of light.
In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn't be mixed. And if theyare, the fiction parts should be printed in red ink, the fact parts in black ink.
All we have gained then by our unbelief Is a life of doubt diversified by faith, For one of faith diversified by doubt: We called the chess-board white,we call it black.
White shall not neutralize the black, nor good Compensate bad in man, absolve him so: Life's business being just the terrible choice.
And finds, with keen discriminating sight, Black's not so black;nor white so very white.
: Why do you wear black all the time? : I'm in mourning for my life.
Is it because I is black?
What is Africa to me: Copper sun or scarlet sea, Jungle star or jungle track, Strong bronzed men, or regal black Women from whose loins I sprang When the birds of Eden sang?
Ever at Thy glowing altar Must my heart grow sick and falter, Wishing He I served were black.
It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but, as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black as the painted face of a savage.
The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.
Because a man has a black face and a different religion fromours, there isno reasonwhy heshould betreatedas a brute.
Any colorso long as it's black.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Irish Americans are about as Irish as Black Americans are African.
and Ireally hopeno white person ever has causetowrite about me because they never understand Black love is Black wealth and they'll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that all the while I was quite happy
White people really deal more with God and black people with Jesus.
A white face goes with a white mind.Occasionally a black face goes with a white mind.Very seldom a white face will have a black mind.
The world is not black and white. More like black and grey.
Though it be a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly sodoubly dynamicto be young, gifted and black.
She taught me what her uncle once taught her: How easily the biggest coal block split If you got the grain and hammer angled right. The sound of that relaxed alluring blow, Its co-opted and obliterated echo, Taught me to hit, taught me to loosen, Taught me between the hammer and the block To face the music. Teach me now to listen, To strike it rich behind the linear black.
Jazz music hashaunted America for seventy years.It has tempted us out of our lily-white reserve with its black promise of untrammeled joy.
Bodyand soul,Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?
I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.
Asyougrowolder, you'll seewhitemen cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget itwheneverawhitemandoesthattoa black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.
If you're bornin Americawith a black skin, you're bornin prison.
During my lifetime I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideals of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hopeto live for, and toseerealized.But My Lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
I have always wanted to develop a way of writing that was irrevocably black. I don't have the resources of a musician but I thought that if it was truly black literature, it would not be black because Iwas, it would notevenbe black because of its subject matter. It would be something intrinsic, indigenous, something in the way it was put togetherthe sentences, the structure, texture and toneso that anyone who read it would realize.
For those of you watching in black and white, Spurs are in the all-yellow strip.
What can I tell you, son of mine? I could tell you of heartbreak, hatred blind, I could tell of crimes that shame mankind, Of brutal wrong and deeds malign, Of rape and murder, son of mine; But I'll tell instead of brave and fine When lives of black and white entwine, And men in brotherhood combine This would I tell you, son of mine.
When things go wrong and will not come right, Though you do the best you can, When life looks black as the hour of night
He was a black Irish type, with centuries of rebelliousness behind him, and I decided to chance it.
I wanted to be black. I always wanted to be black Being black iswarm and gay, being white is cold and sad.
J'ai choisi mon peuple noir peinant, mon peuple paysan, toute la race paysanne, par le monde. I chose my black people struggling, my country people, all country people, in the world.
In a room of the palace Black Mrs Behemoth Gave way to wrath And the wildest malice.
Still falls the Rain Dark as the world of man, black as our loss Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails Upon the cross.
Now the nimble fingers are no more nimble, And the silver thimble lies cold and tarnished black.
Let me say it again, I don't believe in black majority rule ever in Rhodesia. Not in a thousand years.
After the first powerful plain manifesto The black statement of pistons, without more fuss, But gliding like a queen, she leaves the station. 807
Life is not all Beer and Skittles. The inherent tragedy of things works itself out from white to black and blacker, and the poor things of a day look ruefully on. Does it shake my cast-iron faith? I cannot say it does. I believe in an ultimate decency of things: ay, and if I woke in hell, should still believe it!
And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep, And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire.
As I came through the desert thus it was, As I came through the desert: All was black, In heaven no single star, on earth no track; A brooding hush without a stir or note; The air so thick it clotted in my throat.
The choice in politics isn't usually between black and white. It is between two horrible shades of grey.
The Red Cow was very respectable, shealways behaved like a perfect lady and she knew What was What. To her a thing was either black or whitethere was no question of it being grey or perhaps pink. People were good or they were badthere was nothing in between. Dandelions were either sweet or sourthere were never any moderately nice ones.
To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life; For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane, But that the fear of something after death Murders the innocent sleep, Great nature's second course, And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune Than fly to others that we know not of. There's the respect must give us pause: Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
In terms ofcommunication,Japan isliketheblack hole of the universe. It receives signals but does not emit them.
There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joyand that it is this which will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.
I am a product of every other black woman before me who has done or said anything worthwhile.Recognizing that I am part of history is what allows me to soar.
Brilliant lecturers shouldn't be wasted in lecture rooms: they should appear onTV. We need black market universities, in which people just help each other, and which don't leave out the poor.
Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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