So the brother in black offers to these United States the source of courage that endures, and laughter.

Happiness is nothing but everyday living seen through a veil.

want won't kill you half as quick as worry will.

To a haughty belly, kindness is hard to swallow and harder to digest.

Now, suppose a Negro does something really magnificent, and I glory, not in the benefit to mankind, but in the fact that the doer was a Negro. Must I not also go hang my head in shame when a member of my race does something execrable? . . . The white race did not go into a laboratory and invent incandescent light. That was Edison. . . . If you are under the impression that every white man is an Edison, just look around a bit.

Look lak she been livin' through uh hundred years in January without one day of spring.

I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all.