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
James Weldon JohnsonThis country can have no more democracy than it accords and guarantees to the humblest and weakest citizen.
James Weldon JohnsonO Black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
James Weldon JohnsonThe 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.
James Weldon JohnsonAmsterdam 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.
James Weldon Johnson