black quotes

   A reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure until he knows whether the writer of it be a black man or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor.

-Addison,Joseph
  In The Spectator, no.1,1 Mar.

If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat.

-Angelou, Maya originally MayaJohnson
  I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, opening section.

There is a kind of strength that is almost frightening in black women. It's as if a steel rod runs right through the head down to the feet.

-Angelou, Maya originally MayaJohnson
  Television interview, 21 Nov. Collected in Conversations with Maya  Angelou (1989).

Candida me docuit nigras odisse puellas. Odero si potero. Si non, invitus amabo. A white girl instructed me to hate black girls. I shall hate them if I can. If not, I shall love themöagainst my will.

-Anonymous
c.1c  AD  Graffito found in Pompeii. In Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum I V,1520.

Black is beautiful.

-Anonymous
  US black civil rights movement.

Black power.

-Anonymous
  US black civil rights slogan coined by Stokely Carmichael.

My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child, But I am black as if bereaved of light.

-Blake,William
  Songs of Innocence,'The Little Black Boy'.

In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn't be mixed. And if theyare, the fiction parts should be printed in red ink, the fact parts in black ink.

-Bowen, Catherine Shober ne¤  e Drinker
  In Publisher's Weekly, 24 Mar. Bowen's biographies were frequently partly fictionalized.

All we have gained then by our unbelief Is a life of doubt diversified by faith, For one of faith diversified by doubt: We called the chess-board white,öwe call it black.

-Browning, Robert
  Men and Women,'Bishop Blougram's  Apology'.

White shall not neutralize the black, nor good Compensate bad in man, absolve him so: Life's business being just the terrible choice.

-Browning, Robert
^9  The Ring and the Book, bk.10, l.1235^7.

And finds, with keen discriminating sight, Black's not so black;önor white so very white.

-Canning, George
  'New Morality', l.199^200.

: Why do you wear black all the time? : I'm in mourning for my life.

-Chekhov, Anton
     MEDVEDENKOMASHA1896  The Seagull, act1.

Is it because I is black?

-Cohen, Sacha Baron
  Frequently, as comic character  Ali G.

What is Africa to me: Copper sun or scarlet sea, Jungle star or jungle track, Strong bronzed men, or regal black Women from whose loins I sprang When the birds of Eden sang?

-Cullen, Countee
  On These I Stand,'Heritage'.

Ever at Thy glowing altar Must my heart grow sick and falter, Wishing He I served were black.

-Cullen, Countee
  On These I Stand,'Heritage'.

   It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but, as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black as the painted face of a savage.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
  Of Coketown. Hard Times, bk.1, ch.5.

The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.

-Washington Bailey
  'The Destiny of Colored  Americans' in The North Star, 16 Nov.

Because a man has a black face and a different religion fromours, there isno reasonwhy heshould betreatedas a brute.

-Edward VII
  Letter from India to Lord Granville, 30 Nov.

   Any coloröso long as it's black.

-Ford, Henry
Of the Model T Ford. Quoted in  Allan Nevins Ford (1957), vol.2.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

-Frost, Robert Lee
  'Birches'.