James Weldon Johnson Quotes
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As yet, the Negroes themselves do not fully appreciate these old slave songs.
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Shortly after this I was made a member of the boys' choir, it being found that I possessed a clear, strong soprano voice. I enjoyed the singing very much.
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O black and unknown bards of long ago,How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?How, in your darkness, did you come to knowThe power and beauty of the minstrels' lyre?
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Young man, young man, your arm's too short to box with God.
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I had enjoyed life in Paris, and, taking all things into consideration, enjoyed it wholesomely.
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This Great God,Like a mammy bending over her baby,Kneeled down in the dustToiling over a lump of clayTill He shaped it in His own image.
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In Berlin I especially enjoyed the orchestral concerts, and I attended a large number of them. I formed the acquaintance of a good many musicians, several of whom spoke of my playing in high terms.
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Eternities before the first-born day,Or ere the first sun fledged his wings of flame,Calm Night, the everlasting and the same,A brooding mother over chaos lay.
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With his head in his hands,God thought and thought,Till he thought: I'll make me a man!
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The peculiar fascination which the South held over my imagination and my limited capital decided me in favor of Atlanta University; so about the last of September I bade farewell to the friends and scenes of my boyhood and boarded a train for the South.
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Lift every voice and singTill earth and heaven ring,Ring with the harmonies of Liberty.Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies;Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
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The Southern whites are in many respects a great people. Looked at from a certain point of view, they are picturesque. If one will put oneself in a romantic frame of mind, one can admire their notions of chivalry and bravery and justice.
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You are young, gifted, and Black. We must begin to tell our young, There's a world waiting for you, Yours is the quest that's just begun.
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But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form.
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It is a struggle; for though the black man fights passively, he nevertheless fights; and his passive resistance is more effective at present than active resistance could possibly be. He bears the fury of the storm as does the willow tree.
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Americans are immensely popular in Paris; and this is not due solely to the fact that they spend lots of money there, for they spend just as much or more in London, and in the latter city they are merely tolerated because they do spend.
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Through my music teaching and my not absolutely irregular attendance at church, I became acquainted with the best class of colored people in Jacksonville.
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Washington shows the Negro not only at his best, but also at his worst.
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I thought of Paris as a beauty spot on the face of the earth, and of London as a big freckle.
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My mother was kept very busy with her sewing; sometimes she would have another woman helping her.
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And Satan smiled, stretched out his hand, and said,-'O War, of all the scourges of humanity, I crown you chief.'
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And so for a couple of years my life was divided between my music and my school books.
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Labor is the fabled magician's wand, the philosophers stone, and the cap of good fortune.
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As I look back now I can see that I was a perfect little aristocrat.