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Famous Countee Cullen Quotes
“I love bright books even when they fail me.”
“My poetry has become the way of my giving out what music is within me.”
“Ever at Thy glowing altar Must my heart grow sick and falter, Wishing He I served were black.”
“Lord, forgive me if my need Sometimes shapes a human creed.”
“Never love with all your heart, It only ends in aching.”
“We shall not always plant while others reap”
“Dame Poverty gave me my name, And Pain godfathered me.”
“Lord, I fashion dark gods, too, Daring even to give You Dark despairing features”
“I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind”
“I cut my teeth as the black raccoon-- For implements of battle.”
“The night whose sable breast relieves the stark, White stars, is no less lovely being dark”
“Africa? A book one thumbs Listlessly, till slumber comes.”
“Quaint, outlandish heathen gods Black men fashion out of rods”
“If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.”
“Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:/ To make a poet black, and bid him sing!”
“I was reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage.”
“Whatever lives is granted breath But by the grace and sufferance of Death.”
“The loss of love is a terrible thing; They lie who say that death is worse.”
“I have a rendezvous with life.”