“My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind.”

“The only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you'll finish it.”

“I went down to the river, I set down on the bank. I tried to think but couldn't, So I jumped in and sank.”

“There is no color line in death. I swear to the lord I still can't see Why Democracy means Everybody but me. O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath - America will be! I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.”

“Through my grandmother's stories always life moved, moved heroically toward an end. Nobody ever cried in my grandmother's stories. They worked, or schemed, or fought. But no crying. When my grandmother died, I didn't cry, either. Something about my grandmother's stories (without her ever having said so) taught me the uselessness of crying about anything."”

“You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.”

“Come, Lady, die to live.”

“To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune, Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep No more; and by a sleep, to say we end The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die to sleep, To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there's the rub.”

“Now, my masters, happy man be his dole, say I; every man to his business.”

“In friendship, as in love, we are often happier through our ignorance than our knowledge.”

“Some there be that shadows kiss; Such have but a shadow's bliss.”

“To wilful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.”

“I hourly learn a doctrine of obedience.”

“Experience is by industry achieved, And perfected by the swift course of time.”

“Prosperity's the very bond of love, Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together Affliction alters.”

“Do all men kill the things they do not love?”

“Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye Than twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet, And I am proof against their enmity.”

“For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.”

“There is not a better day in the world to be spent than with a lot of wise old cowmen around barbecued beef, black coffee and good "free holy" beans.”

“Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard.”

“Were all the letters sun, I could not see one.”

“O most delicate fiend!Who is't can read a woman? Is there more?”

“Hear the meaning within the word.”

“Now, my masters, happy man be his dole, say I; every man to his business.”

“No profit grows where no pleasure is taken.”

“Why, universal plodding poisons up The nimble spirits in the arteries, As motion and long-during action tires The sinewy vigor of the traveller.”