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James Weldon Johnson Quotes
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My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that after all I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage
James Weldon Johnson
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And God smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around his shoulder.
James Weldon Johnson
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This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image.
James Weldon Johnson
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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.
James Weldon Johnson
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I am a thing not new, I am as old
As human nature. I am that which lurks,
Ready to spring whenever a bar is loosed;
The ancient trait which fights incessantly
Against restraint, balks at the upward climb;
The weight forever seeking to obey
The law of downward pull;—and I am more:
The bitter fruit am I of planted seed;
The resultant, the inevitable end
Of evil forces and the powers of wrong.
James Weldon Johnson
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With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I'll make me a man!
James Weldon Johnson
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It is strange how in some things honest people can be dishonest without the slightest compunction.
James Weldon Johnson
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Any musical person who has never heard a Negro congregation under the spell of religious fervor sing these old songs has missed one of the most thrilling emotions which the human heart may experience.
James Weldon Johnson
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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.
James Weldon Johnson
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My appearance was always good and my ability to play on the piano, especially ragtime, which was then at the height of its vogue, made me a welcome guest.
James Weldon Johnson
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Find Sister Caroline...
And she's tired—
She's weary—
Go down, Death, and bring her to me.
James Weldon Johnson
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Father, Father Abraham,
To-day look on us from above;
On us, the offspring of thy faith,
The children of thy Christ-like love.
James Weldon Johnson
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How would you have us, as we are?
Or sinking 'neath the load we bear?
Our eyes fixed forward on a star?
Or gazing empty at despair?
James Weldon Johnson
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So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And He spat out the seven seas;
He batted His eyes, and the lightnings flashed;
He clapped His hands, and the thunders rolled;
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.
James Weldon Johnson
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Quote of the day
Now if the harvest is over, And the world cold, Give me the bonus of laughter, As I lose hold.
John Betjeman
James Weldon Johnson
Born:
June 17, 1871
Died:
June 26, 1938
(aged 67)
Bio:
James Weldon Johnson was an American author, educator, lawyer, diplomat, songwriter, and civil rights activist.
Known for:
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912)
The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922)
Black Manhattan (1930)
Fifty years & other poems (1917)
Along this way (1933)
Most used words:
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god
thought
life
race
music
negro
white
eyes
beauty
human
man
find
looked
earth
James Weldon Johnson on Wikipedia
James Weldon Johnson works on Gutenberg Project
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