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black quotes

  •    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.

    -Joseph Addison
      In The Spectator, no.1,1 Mar.

  • 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.

    - Maya originally MayaJohnson Angelou
      I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, opening section.

  • 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.

    - Maya originally MayaJohnson Angelou
      Television interview, 21 Nov. Collected in Conversations with Maya  Angelou (1989).

  • 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.

    -Anonymous
    c.1c  AD  Graffito found in Pompeii. In Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum I V,1520.

  • Black is beautiful.

    -Anonymous
      US black civil rights movement.

  • Black power.

    -Anonymous
      US black civil rights slogan coined by Stokely Carmichael.

  • 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.

    -William Blake
      Songs of Innocence,'The Little Black Boy'.

  • 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.

    - Catherine Shober ne  e Drinker Bowen
      In Publisher's Weekly, 24 Mar. Bowen's biographies were frequently partly fictionalized.

  • 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.

    - Robert Browning
      Men and Women,'Bishop Blougram's  Apology'.

  • White shall not neutralize the black, nor good Compensate bad in man, absolve him so: Life's business being just the terrible choice.

    - Robert Browning
    ^9  The Ring and the Book, bk.10, l.1235^7.

  • And finds, with keen discriminating sight, Black's not so black;nor white so very white.

    - George Canning
      'New Morality', l.199^200.

  • : Why do you wear black all the time? : I'm in mourning for my life.

    - Anton Chekhov
         MEDVEDENKOMASHA1896  The Seagull, act1.

  • Is it because I is black?

    - Sacha Baron Cohen
      Frequently, as comic character  Ali G.

  • 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?

    - Countee Cullen
      On These I Stand,'Heritage'.

  • Ever at Thy glowing altar Must my heart grow sick and falter, Wishing He I served were black.

    - Countee Cullen
      On These I Stand,'Heritage'.

  •    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.

    - CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
      Of Coketown. Hard Times, bk.1, ch.5.

  • The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.

    -Washington Bailey
      'The Destiny of Colored  Americans' in The North Star, 16 Nov.

  • Because a man has a black face and a different religion fromours, there isno reasonwhy heshould betreatedas a brute.

    -Edward VII
      Letter from India to Lord Granville, 30 Nov.

  •    Any colorso long as it's black.

    - Henry Ford
    Of the Model T Ford. Quoted in  Allan Nevins Ford (1957), vol.2.

  • 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.

    - Robert Lee Frost
      'Birches'.

  • Irish Americans are about as Irish as Black Americans are African.

    - Bob Geldof
      In the Observer, 22  Jun.

  • 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

    -Nikki in full Yolande CorneliaGiovanni,Jr Giovanni
      Black Judgement,'Nikki^Rosa'.

  • White people really deal more with God and black people with Jesus.

    -Nikki in full Yolande CorneliaGiovanni,Jr Giovanni
    Conversation with  James Baldwin, London, 4 Nov. Collected in  A Dialogue (1973).

  • 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.

    -Nikki in full Yolande CorneliaGiovanni,Jr Giovanni
    Conversation with  James Baldwin, London, 4 Nov. Collected in  A Dialogue (1973).

  • The world is not black and white. More like black and grey.

    - (Henry) Graham Greene
      Quoted in'Sayings of theYear', the Observer, Dec.

  • 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.

    - LorraineVivian Hansberry
    Speech to entrants in the United Negro College Fund writers competition. The phrase was later used as the title of her biography Young, Gifted and Black (1969).

  • 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.

    - SeamusJustin Heaney
      The Haw Lantern,'Clearances: In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911^1984'.

  • Jazz music hashaunted America for seventy years.It has tempted us out of our lily-white reserve with its black promise of untrammeled joy.

    -John Clellon Holmes
      Preface to reprint of  The Horn.

  • Bodyand soul,Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?

    -June Jordan
      'Black Studies: Bringing Back the Person', in the Evergreen Review, Oct.

  • 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.

    -June Jordan
       Address to Black Writers Conference, Howard University. Collected as'Where Is the Love?' in Moving Towards Home (1989).

  • 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.

    - (Nelle) Harper Lee
       Atticus Finch. To Kill  A Mockingbird, pt.2, ch.23.

  • If you're bornin Americawith a black skin, you're bornin prison.

    -Malcolm X originally Malcolm Little
      Interview,  Jun.

  • 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.

    - Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
      Speech in court, 20  Apr, when charged under the Suppression of Communism  Act and facing the death penalty.

  •    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.

    -Toni Chloe Anthony ne  e Wofford Morrison
    Quoted in Paul Gilroy Small  Acts (1993),'Living memory: a meeting with Toni Morrison'.

  • For those of you watching in black and white, Spurs are in the all-yellow strip.

    -John Motson
    Quoted in Motson's National Obsession (2004).

  • 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.

    -Kathleen Jean Mary Ruska
      We Are Going,'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

    -Myles na Gopaleen
    US   writer.   She   is   best   known   as   a   novelist,   but   has   also published   several   volumes   of   poetry,   and   essays,   critical writings and journalism.

  • He was a black Irish type, with centuries of rebelliousness behind him, and I decided to chance it.

    -J(ohn) B(oynton) Priestley
    Saturn Over theWater.

  • I wanted to be black. I always wanted to be black† Being black iswarm and gay, being white is cold and sad.

    -Jean pseudonym of  Ellen Gwendolen Rees Williams Rhys
      Voyage in the Dark, ch.1.

  • 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.

    - Le  opold Se  dar Senghor
      Chants d'ombre,'Que m'accompagnent ka  ra et balafong, 3'.

  • In a room of the palace Black Mrs Behemoth Gave way to wrath And the wildest malice.

    - Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell
      Fa c° ade,'Black Mrs Behemoth'.

  • 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.

    - Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell
      'The Raids,1940. Night and Dawn'.

  • Now the nimble fingers are no more nimble, And the silver thimble lies cold and tarnished black.

    - Sir (Francis) Osbert Sitwell
      'Mrs Mew'sWindowbox'.

  • Let me say it again, I don't believe in black majority rule ever in Rhodesia. Not in a thousand years.

    - Ian Douglas Smith
      Radio broadcast, 20 Mar.

  • After the first powerful plain manifesto The black statement of pistons, without more fuss, But gliding like a queen, she leaves the station. 807

    - Sir Stephen Harold Spender
      'The Express'.

  • 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!

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
      Letter to Sidney Colvin, 23 Aug.

  • 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.

    -Tennyson
      Maud, pt.3, sect.6, stanza 4, l.51^3.

  • 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.

    -James pseudonym 'BV',ByssheVanolis Thomson
      The City of Dreadful Night, pt.4.

  •    The choice in politics isn't usually between black and white. It is between two horrible shades of grey.

    - Lord (George Edward) Peter Thorneycroft
      In the SundayTelegraph,11 Feb.

  • 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.

    - P(amela) L(yndon) Travers
      Mary Poppins, ch.5.

  •    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,

    - Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens Twain

  • In terms ofcommunication,Japan isliketheblack hole of the universe. It receives signals but does not emit them.

    -Tadao Umaseo
    Quoted in David Halberstam The Reckoning (1986).

  •    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.

    - Alice Malsenior Walker
      Possessing the Secret ofJoy, epigraph.

  • 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.

    - Oprah Winfrey
    Quoted in Brian Lanker I Dream aWorld: Portraits of Black WomenWho Changed America (1989).

  • 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.

    -Theodore Zeldin
      Quoted in Christina Hardyment 'Zeldin and the art of human relationships', in OxfordToday, vol.7, no.2, Hilary Issue.

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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