Countee Cullen Quotes

The key to all strange things is in thy heart..../ My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas.

I have a rendezvous with life.

We were not made to eternally weep.

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.

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.

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind

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.

Never love with all your heart, It only ends in aching.

If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.

[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.

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.

We shall not always plant while others reap

There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call 'the breaks.

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:/ To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

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.

Whatever lives is granted breath But by the grace and sufferance of Death.

The loss of love is a terrible thing; They lie who say that death is worse.

I was reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage.