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.

Every race and every nation should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst.

When we arrived in London, my sadness at leaving Paris was turned into despair. After my long stay in the French capital, huge, ponderous, massive London seemed to me as ugly a thing as man could contrive to make.

My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that after all I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage

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

...one of the best things about running is that no matter how fast you've run in the past, running fast in the future does not come easily or with any guarantees.

O Black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?