James Weldon Johnson Quotes

Labor is the fabled magician's wand, the philosophers stone, and the cap of good fortune.

James Weldon Johnson

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• If in my twenties I'd gotten one of the two-dozen roles that I did screen tests for and almost got, I think I would have become bored with the awards circuit, the whole hype machine.

  

  Viggo Mortensen
  • Think
  • Bored
  • Awards

• I don't know if it's my music, my lyrics, my sound, and knowing the music business the way I do-all I can say is, my career has lasted way longer than I expected.

  

  Barry White
  • Music
  • Business
  • Career

• Though we may know Him by a thousand names, He is one and the same to us all.

  

  Mahatma Gandhi
  • May
  • Know
  • Same

• I don't think the space station will ever do anything for exploration. Putting people up there for a year or more is the only way you will get anywhere near the exploration concept.

  

  Wally Schirra
  • People
  • Up
  • Space

• I'm not a cheater, but if I win Olympic gold and people are looking at me and saying I am a cheat because I've won, it's hugely disrespectful given the hard work I've put in.

  

  Adam Peaty
  • People
  • Work
  • Win

• Elvis and I were very good friends. We were such good friends that, on the day that he passed, I was the first one his father called, to let me know what had happened.

  

  Wayne Newton
  • Good
  • Friends
  • Father

• I am going to keep having fun every day I have left, because there is no other way of life. You just have to decide whether you are a Tigger or an Eeyore.

  

  Randy Pausch
  • Life
  • Fun
  • Day

• By no means do I want to try to leave country music. That's absolutely where I want to stay.

  

  Sam Hunt
  • Music
  • Country
  • Want

• Why can't somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks?

  

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
  • Why
  • Give
  • Nobody

• I've never been to New Zealand before. But one of my role models, Xena, the warrior princess, comes from there.

  

  Madeleine Albright
  • New
  • Warrior
  • Princess

• As soon as we can wrest from Nature the secret of the internal structure of the compounds produced by her, chemical science can then even surpass Nature by producing compounds as variations of the natural ones, which the living cell is unable to construct.

  

  Otto Wallach
  • Nature
  • Science
  • Living

• My mother took great relish in introducing me as 'This is my son - he's a doctor but not the kind that helps people.'

  

  Randy Pausch
  • People
  • Great
  • Mother

• Prison has humbled me in a lot of ways, because when you go to prison, I became 11 R 2024 you know, I wasn't Ja Rule the superstar. I wasn't any of that. I was just a regular inmate.

  

  Ja Rule
  • Me
  • Prison
  • Superstar

• When you're young and you're in love and it doesn't work out - it hurts.

  

  Orlando Bloom
  • Work
  • Love
  • Young

• Barack Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012 were dismissed by some of his critics as merely symbolic for African Americans. But there is nothing 'mere' about symbols.

  

  Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • Nothing
  • Some
  • Symbols

• I tried to connect my singing voice to my guitar an' my guitar to my singing voice. Like the two was talking to one another.

  

  B. B. King
  • Singing
  • Voice
  • Guitar

• Beware of the company you keep. See that you associate with the right type of people.

  

  Dada Vaswani
  • People
  • You
  • Company

• I was seeing a lot of really good things about Get Shorty when it came out, and my wife pointed out that if you validate the good reviews, you also have to validate the bad reviews.

  

  Barry Sonnenfeld
  • Good
  • Bad
  • Wife

• African continent GMs do exist; but, according to the system of racial classification, I am the first Black GM in history...it matters, and doesn't matter, all at the same time.

  

  Maurice Ashley
  • Time
  • History
  • Black

• What's natural is the microbe. All the rest-heath, integrity, purity (if you like)-is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter. The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention.

  

  Albert Camus
  • Man
  • Attention
  • Human Will

• Life is very fleeting. It’s important to be gentle and optimistic. We look behind and think what we’ve done in this life has been good. It was simple; it was modest. Everyone creates their own story and moves on. That’s it. I don’t feel particularly important. What we create is not important. We’re very insignificant.

  

  Oscar Niemeyer
  • Life
  • Good
  • Important

• A lot of writers that I know have told me that the first book you write, you write about your childhood, whether you want to or not. It calls you back.

  

  Tea Obreht
  • Book
  • Me
  • Childhood

• There's a lot to be said for an American-style liberal-arts education, which prevents young people from professionalizing right away.

  

  Elif Batuman
  • People
  • American
  • Education

• Labor is the fabled magician's wand, the philosophers stone, and the cap of good fortune.

  

  James Weldon Johnson
  • Good