“I wish the rent Was heaven sent.”

“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.”

“Cheap little rhymes A cheap little tune Are sometimes as dangerous As a sliver of the moon.”

“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.”

“Negro blood is sure powerful, because just one drop of black blood makes a colored man. One drop--you are a Negro! . . . Black is powerful.”

“The object of Art is to give life a shape.”

“I have heard it saidThere is an art which in their piedness sharesWith great creating nature.”

“The astronomers said, 'Give us matter and a little motion and we will construct the universe. It is not enough that we should have matter, we must also have a single impulse, one shove to launch the mass and generate the harmony of the centrifugal and centripetal forces.' ... There is no end to the consequences of the act. That famous aboriginal push propagates itself through all the balls of the system, and through every atom of every ball.”