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

And God stepped out on space, and He looked around and said: I'm lonely - I'll make me a world.

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

In Berlin I especially enjoyed the orchestral concerts, and I attended a large number of them. I formed the acquaintance of a good many musicians, several of whom spoke of my playing in high terms.

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

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

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