One reason cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.

I swear to keep the dead upon my mind, / Disdain for all time to be overglad.

I believe we should all know each other, we human carriers of so many pleasurable differences. To not know is to doubt, to shrink from, sidestep or destroy.

Nothing could stop Mississippi.

Say to them, say to the down-keepers, the sun-slappers, the self-soilers, the harmony-hushers, "Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night." You will be right. For that is the hard home-run. Live not for battles won. Live not for the-end-of-the-song. Live in the along.

Goodness begins simply with the fact of life itself.

It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a 'Negro' fraction.