Quotes by Langston Hughes
Here is a quote from Langston Hughes. Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.
Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.
~ Langston HughesHumor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.
~ Langston HughesWhen peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.
~ Langston HughesWhat happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun? Or does it explode?
~ Langston HughesOne of the great needs of Negro children is to have books about themselves and their lives that can help them be proud.
~ Langston HughesI live in Harlem, New York City. I am unmarried. I like 'Tristan,' goat's milk, short novels, lyric poems, heat, simple folk, boats and bullfights; I dislike 'Aida,' parsnips, long novels, narrative poems, cold, pretentious folk, buses and bridges.
~ Langston HughesWe 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 are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too.
~ Langston HughesI must never write when I do not want to write.
~ Langston HughesMy writing has been largely concerned with the depicting of Negro life in America.
~ Langston HughesI will not take 'but' for an answer.
~ Langston HughesI was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class, and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry. Well, everybody knows - except us - that all Negroes have rhythms, so they elected me class poet.
~ Langston HughesTo my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders, 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 HughesI swear to the Lord, I still can't see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.
~ Langston HughesBeauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.
~ Langston HughesCertainly there is, for the American Negro artist who can escape the restrictions the more advanced among his own group would put upon him, a great field of unused material ready for his art.
~ Langston HughesAn artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.
~ Langston HughesWe Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.
~ Langston HughesLike a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.
~ Langston HughesBeauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.
~ Langston HughesLet the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
~ Langston HughesHold fast to dreams, for when dreams go, life is a barren field, frozen with snow.
~ Langston HughesLike a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.
~ Langston HughesHold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
~ Langston HughesLet the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
~ Langston HughesPerhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people - the beauty within themselves.
~ Langston HughesI have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.
~ Langston HughesJazz, to me, is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul - the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.
~ Langston HughesIn all my life, I have never been free. I have never been able to do anything with freedom, except in the field of my writing.
~ Langston HughesMy soul has grown deep like the rivers.
~ Langston HughesHold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.
~ Langston HughesWriting is like travelling. It's wonderful to go somewhere, but you get tired of staying.
~ Langston Hughes


