This country can have no more democracy than it accords and guarantees to the humblest and weakest citizen.

I finally made up my mind that I would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race; but that I would change my name, raise a mustache, and let the world take me for what it would; that it was not necessary for me to go about with a label of inferiority pasted across my forehead.

A people may become great through many means, but there is only one measure by which its greatness is recognized and acknowledged. The final measure of the greatness of all peoples is the amount and standard of the literature and art they have produced.... No people that has produced great literature and art has ever been looked upon by the world as distinctly inferior.

It is strange how in some things honest people can be dishonest without the slightest compunction.

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

The peculiar fascination which the South held over my imagination and my limited capital decided me in favor of Atlanta University; so about the last of September I bade farewell to the friends and scenes of my boyhood and boarded a train for the South.

My mother was kept very busy with her sewing; sometimes she would have another woman helping her.