Countee Cullen Quotes
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Never love with all your heart, It only ends in aching.
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Death cut the strings that gave me life, And handed me to Sorrow, The only kind of middle wife My folks could beg or borrow.
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Quaint, outlandish heathen gods Black men fashion out of rods
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We were not made to eternally weep.
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I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind
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What is Africa to me: Copper sun or scarlet sea, Jungle star or jungle track, Strong bronzed men, or regal black Women from whose loins I sprang When the birds of Eden sang?
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Ever at Thy glowing altar Must my heart grow sick and falter, Wishing He I served were black.
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I was reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage.
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For we must be one thing or the other, an asset or a liability, the sinew in your wing to help you soar, or the chain to bind you to earth.
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My poetry has become the way of my giving out what music is within me.
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[W]e have always resented the natural inclination of most white people to demand spirituals the moment it is known that a Negro is about to sing. So often the request has seemed to savor of the feeling that we could do this and this alone.
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The key to all strange things is in thy heart..../ My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas.
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Give but a grain of the heart's rich seed, Confine some under cover, And when love goes, bid him God-speed. And find another lover.
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The truth is... everything counts. Everything. Everything we do and everything we say. Everything helps or hurts; everything adds to or takes away from someone else.
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All day long and all night through, One thing only must I do: Quench my pride and cool my blood, Lest I perish in the flood.
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Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, So I make an idle boast; Jesus of the twice-turned cheek Lamb of God, although I speak With my mouth thus, in my heart Do I play a double part.
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Lord, I fashion dark gods, too, Daring even to give You Dark despairing features
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Whatever lives is granted breath But by the grace and sufferance of Death.
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I cut my teeth as the black raccoon-- For implements of battle.
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Not for myself I make this prayer, But for this race of mine That stretches forth from shadowed places Dark hands for bread and wine.
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Lord, forgive me if my need Sometimes shapes a human creed.
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Dame Poverty gave me my name, And Pain godfathered me.
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What is last year's snow to me, Last year's anything? The tree Budding yearly must forget How its past arose or set
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I have a rendezvous with life.
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Africa? A book one thumbs Listlessly, till slumber comes.
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We shall not always plant while others reap
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There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call 'the breaks.
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If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.
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The loss of love is a terrible thing; They lie who say that death is worse.
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Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:/ To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
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