Great Throughts Treasury

"Silence is all the genius a fool has."

"An envious heart makes a treacherous ear."

"Women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget."

"A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it."

"A great state is a well-blended mash of something of all the people and all of none of the people. The liquor of statecraft is distilled from the mash you got."

"A cosmic loneliness was my shadow."

"Africa has her mouth on Moses."

"A whisper ran along the edge of the dawn."

"Ah done been in sorrow's kitchen and Ah done licked out all de pots. Ah done died in grief and been buried in de bitter waters, and Ah done rose agin from de dead lak Lazarus."

"Ah betcha you wants some dressed up dude dat got to look at de sole of his shoe everytime he cross de street tuh see whether he got enough leather dere tuh make it across."

"Ah done lived Grandma?s way, now Ah means tuh live mine."

"Ah done growed ten feet higher from jus? listenin? tuh you, Janie. Ah ain?t satisfied with mahself no mo?. Ah means tuh make Sam take me fishin? wid him after this."

"Ah hates you tuh the same degree dat Ah useter tove yuh."

"Ah know all dem sitters-and-talkers worry they guts into fiddle strings till dey find out whut we been talkin' 'bout. Dat's all right, Pheoby, tell 'em. Dey goingtuh make 'miration 'cause mah love didn't work lak they love, if dey ever had any... love ain't somethin' lak uh grindstone dat's de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore."

"Ah?m hard of understandin? at times."

"Ah'll clean 'em, you fry 'em and let's eat,' he said with the assurance of not being refused. They went out into the kitchen and fixed up the hot fish and corn muffins and ate. Then Tea Cake went to the piano without so much as asking and began playing blues and singing, and throwing grins over his shoulder. The sounds lulled Janie to soft slumber and she woke up with Tea Cake combing her hair and scratching the dandruff from her scalp. It made her more comfortable and drowsy."

"All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood."

"All my skinfolk ain't kinfolk."

"Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept."

"All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood."

"And I can't die easy thinking maybe the menfolks white or black is making a spit cup out of you. Have some sympathy for me. Put me down easy, Janie, I'm a cracked plate."

"Anybody depending on somebody else's gods is depending on a fox not to eat chickens."

"Anyone who looked more white folkish than herself was better than she was in her criteria, therefore it was right that they should be cruel to her at times, just as she was cruel to those more negroid than herself in direct ratio to their negroness?Like the pecking order in a chicken yard? Once having set up her idols and built altars to them it was inevitable that she would worship there."

"Are you so simple as to assume that the Big Surrender banished the concept of human slavery from the earth? What is the principle of slavery? Only the literal buying and selling of human flesh on the block? That was only an outside symbol. Real slavery is couched in the desire and the efforts of any man or community to live and advance their interests at the expense of the lives and interests of others. All of the outward signs come out of that."

"Anytime you catch folks lying, they scared of something!"

"At certain times I have no race. I am me. I belong to no race or time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads."

"At the bottom in the gut of jazz if you listen closely you can hear?no matter how complexly, obliquely, mysteriously stylized?somebody talking, crying, growling, singing, farting, praying, stomping, voicing in all those modes through which our bodies communicate some tale about how it feels to be here on earth or leaving, or about the sweet pain of hanging on between the coming and going."

"Aw, git reconciled!.. You can?t git her wid no fish sandwich."

"Bertha had been in town three months now. Sykes was paying her room rent at Della Lewis??the only house in town that have taken her in."

"Being under my own roof, and my personality not invaded by others makes a lot of difference in my outlook on life and everything. Oh, to be once more alone in a house!"

"Bitterness is the coward's revenge on the world for having been hurt."

"brother pastorin? up round Ocala dat"

"But as de old folk always say, Ah'm born but Ah ain't dead. No tellin' whut Ah'm liable tuh do yet."

"But for the national welfare, it is urgent to realize that the minorities do think, and think about something other than the race problem."

"But any man who walks in the way of power and property is bound to meet hate."

"But nothin' can stop you from wishin'."

"But it was night, it stayed night."

"But I ain't puttin' it in de street. Ah'm tellin' you.'"

"But stillness was the sleep of swords."

"But, don't care how firm your determination is, you can't keep turning round in one place like a horse grinding sugar cane."

"But the whole town got vain over it."

"Comfort for herself. Yes, she would love Logan after they were married. She could see no way for it to come about, but Nanny and the old folks had said it, so it must be so"

"Course, talkin' don't amount tuh uh hill uh beans when yuh can't do nothin' else. And listenin' tuh dat kind uh talk is jus' lak openin' yo' mouth and lettin' de moon shine down yo' throat. It's uh known fact, Pheopby, you got tuh go there tuh know there. Yo' papa and yo' mama and nobody else can't tell yuh and show yuh. Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves."

"Develop, nurture and sustain the world community of writers of African descent."

"Dis love! Dat?s just whut?s got us uh pullin? and haulin? and sweatin? and doin? from can?t see in de mornin? till can?t see at night. Nanny to Janie"

"Common danger made common friends"

"Ethical and cultural desegregation. It is a contradiction in terms to scream race pride and equality while at the same time spurning Negro teachers and self-association."

"Don't you realize that the sea is the home of water? All water is off on a journey unless it's in the sea, and it's homesick, and bound to make its way home someday."

"Every tub sits on its bottom."

"Every morning the world flung itself over and exposed the town to the sun."