The colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.

Amsterdam was a great surprise to me. I had always thought of Venice as the city of canals; it had never entered my mind that I should find similar conditions in a Dutch town.

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.

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.

At a very early age I began to thump on the piano alone, and it was not long before I was able to pick out a few tunes? I also learned the names of the notes in both clefs, but I preferred not be hampered by notes.

Young man, young man, your arm's too short to box with God.