If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk. It's so many people never seen de light at all.

No matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you.

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. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding.

You have no idea, sir, how difficult it is to be the victim of benevolence.

Once you wake up thought in a man, you can never put it to sleep again.

Tell me, and then again show me, so I can know.