Quotes by James Weldon Johnson

“O Black and unknown bards of long ago,/ How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?”

“Nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius.”

“Young man, young man, your arms too short to box with God.”

“You are young, gifted, and Black. We must begin to tell our young, Theres a world waiting for you, Yours is the quest thats just begun.”

“The final measure of the greatness of all peoples is the amount and standard of the literature and all they have produced. The world does not know that a people is great until that people produces great literature and art.”

“At a very early age I began to thump on the piano alone, and it was not long before I was able to pick out a few tunes. I also learned the names of the notes in both clefs, but I preferred not be hampered by notes.”

“Labor is the fabled magicians wand, the philosophers stone, and the cap of good fortune.”

“It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives it most distinctive characteristics.”

In the life of everyone there is a limited number of experiences which are not written upon the memory, but stamped there with a die; and in the long years after, they can be called up in detail, and every emotion that was stirred by them can be lived through anew; these are the tragedies of life.

There were two immediate results of my forced loneliness: I began to find company in books, and greater pleasure in music.

It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.

American musicians, instead of investigating ragtime, attempt to ignore it, or dismiss it with a contemptuous word. But that has always been the course of scholasticism in every branch of art. Whatever new thing the people like is poohpoohed; whatever is popular is spoken of as not worth the while. The fact is, nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best that he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius.

Whose starboard eyeSaw chariot swing low?

The fact is, nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best that he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius.

New York City is the most fatally fascinating thing in America. She sits like a great witch at the gate of the country, showing her alluring white face, and hiding her crooked hands and feet under the folds of her wide garments,--constantly enticing thousands from far within, and tempting those who come from across the seas to go no farther. And all these become the victims of her caprice. Some she at once crushes beneath her cruel feet; others she condemns to a fate like that of galley slaves; a few she favors and fondles, riding them high on the bubbles of fortune; then with a sudden breath she blows the bubbles out and laughs mockingly as she watches them fall.

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 know The power and beauty of the minstrels lyre?

The battle was first waged over the right of the Negro to be classed as a human being with a soul; later, as to whether he had sufficient intellect to master even the rudiments of learning; and today it is being fought out over his social recognition.

Young man, young man, your arms too short to box with God.

Amsterdam was a great surprise to me. I had always thought of Venice as the city of canals it had never entered my mind that I should find similar conditions in a Dutch town.

I thought of Paris as a beauty spot on the face of the earth, and of London as a big freckle.