More - Paul Laurence Quotes

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, when his wing is bruised and his bosom sore; when he beats his bars and he would be free, it is not a carol of joy or glee, but a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core.

Paul Laurence

 

People are taking it for granted that [the Negro] ought not to work with his head. And it is so easy for these people among whom we are living to believe this; it flatters and satisfies their self-complacency.

Paul Laurence

 

With our short sight we affect to take a comprehensive view of eternity. Our horizon is the universe.

Paul Laurence

 

When you play a team like St. X, you have to play your best, ... St. X is just a great team, so if we can just even keep up with them, we're pretty pleased. It means we're doing OK.

Paul Laurence

 

And that is life.

Paul Laurence

 Life

But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core.

Paul Laurence

 Prayer

With it all, I cannot help being overwhelmed by self-doubts. I hope there is something worthy in my writings and not merely the novelty of a black face associated with the power to rhyme that has attracted attention.

Paul Laurence

 

I didn't start as a dialect poet, ... talked again and again about poetry.

Paul Laurence

 Poetry

I simply came to the conclusion that I could write [dialect poetry] as well, if not better, than anybody else I knew of, ... and that by doing so I should gain a hearing. I gained the hearing, and now they don't want me to write anything but dialect.

Paul Laurence

 Poetry

[In Is Higher Education for the Negro Hopeless? Dunbar responds to an essay in which Charles Dudley Warner, a white writer, contended blacks were better suited for industrial training, not higher learning. Dismissing Warner as] one who speaks without authority, ... I believe I know my own people pretty thoroughly. I know them all classes, the high and the low, and have yet to see any young man or young woman who had the spirit of work in them before, driven from labor by a college education.

Paul Laurence

 Education