James Weldon Johnson quotes

Young man, young man, your arm's too short to box with God. (James Weldon Johnson)
It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives it most distinctive characteristics.
James Weldon Johnson
And God stepped out on space, And He looked around and said, "I'm lonely- I'll make me a world."
James Weldon Johnson
I believe it to be a fact that the colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.
James Weldon Johnson
Every race and every nation should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst.
James Weldon Johnson
Lift every voice and sing Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty. Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies; Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
James Weldon Johnson
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.
James Weldon Johnson
The 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 Johnson
Amsterdam 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
My luck at the gambling table was varied; sometimes I was fifty to a hundred dollars ahead, and at other times I had to borrow money from my fellow workmen to settle my room rent and pay for my meals.
James Weldon Johnson
I am a thing not new, I am as old As human nature. I am that which lurks, Ready to spring whenever a bar is loosed; The ancient trait which fights incessantly Against restraint, balks at the upward climb; The weight forever seeking to obey The law of downward pull;-and I am more: The bitter fruit am I of planted seed; The resultant, the inevitable end Of evil forces and the powers of wrong. (James Weldon Johnson)
This Great God, Like a mammy bending over her baby, Kneeled down in the dust Toiling over a lump of clay Till He shaped it in His own image.
James Weldon Johnson
You are young, gifted, and Black. We must begin to tell our young, There's a world waiting for you, Yours is the quest that's just begun.
James Weldon Johnson
And Satan smiled, stretched out his hand, and said, "O War, of all the scourges of humanity, I crown you chief.
James Weldon Johnson
So God stepped over to the edge of the world And He spat out the seven seas; He batted His eyes, and the lightnings flashed; He clapped His hands, and the thunders rolled; And the waters above the earth came down, The cooling waters came down.
James Weldon Johnson
Some men enjoy the constant strife Of days with work and worry rife, But that is not my dream of life: I think such men are crazy. For me, a life with worries few, A job of nothing much to do, Just pelf enough to see me through: I fear that I am lazy.
James Weldon Johnson
With his head in his hands, God thought and thought, Till he thought: I'll make me a man!
James Weldon Johnson
The battle was first waged over the right of the Negro to be classed as a human being with a soul; later, as to whether he had sufficient intellect to master even the rudiments of learning; and today it is being fought out over his social recognition.
James Weldon Johnson
I do not see how a people that can find in its conscience any excuse whatever for slowly burning to death a human being, or for tolerating such an act, can be entrusted with the salvation of a race.
James Weldon Johnson
Any musical person who has never heard a Negro congregation under the spell of religious fervor sing these old songs has missed one of the most thrilling emotions which the human heart may experience.
James Weldon Johnson
As yet, the Negroes themselves do not fully appreciate these old slave songs. (James Weldon Johnson)
And God smiled again, And the rainbow appeared, And curled itself around his shoulder.
James Weldon Johnson
You sang far better than you knew; the songs That for your listeners' hungry hearts sufficed Still live,-but more than this to you belongs: You sang a race from wood and stone to Christ.
James Weldon Johnson
Father, Father Abraham, To-day look on us from above; On us, the offspring of thy faith, The children of thy Christ-like love.
James Weldon Johnson
Whose starward eye Saw chariot "swing low”? And who was he That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh, "Nobody knows de trouble I see”?
James Weldon Johnson