96 Quotes by James Weldon Johnson

Young man, young man, your arm’s too short to box with God.

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

In an astonishingly short time I reached the point where the language taught itself – where I learned to speak merely by speaking. This point is the place which students taught foreign languages in our schools and colleges find great difficulty in reaching. I think the main trouble is that they learn too much of a language at a time. A French child with a vocabulary of two hundred words can express more spoken ideas than a student of French can with a knowledge of two thousand.

Paris practices its sins as lightly as it does its religion, while London practices both very seriously.

It may be because Southerners are very much like Frenchmen in that they must talk; and not only must they talk, but they must express their opinions.

My boy, you are by blood, by appearance, by education, and by tastes a white man. Now, why do you want to throw your life away amidst the poverty and ignorance, in the hopeless struggle, of the black people of the United States?

I’m lonely I’ll make me a world.

Music is a universal art; anybody’s music belongs to everybody; you can’t limit it to race or country.

With his head in his hands, God thought and thought, Till he thought: I’ll make me a man!