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

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

Make yourself as happy as possible, and try to make those happy whose lives come in touch with yours. But to attempt to right the wrongs and cease the sufferings of the world in general is a waste of effort.

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.

I had enjoyed life in Paris, and, taking all things into consideration, enjoyed it wholesomely.

There are a great many colored people who are ashamed of the cake-walk, but I think they ought to be proud of it.

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.