Countee Cullen Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 33 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Countee Cullen.
Famous Quotes By Countee Cullen

Death cut the strings that gave me life,
And handed me to Sorrow,
The only kind of middle wife
My folks could beg or borrow. — Countee Cullen

If You Should Go
Love, leave me like the light,
The gently passing day;
We would not know, but for the night,
When it has slipped away.
Go quietly; a dream,
When done, should leave no trace
That it has lived, except a gleam
Across the dreamer's face. — Countee Cullen

The night whose sable breast relieves the stark,
White stars, is no less lovely being dark — Countee Cullen

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

For we must be one thing or the other, an asset or a liability, the sinew in your wing to help you soar, or the chain to bind you to earth. — Countee Cullen

Dame Poverty gave me my name,
And Pain godfathered me. — Countee Cullen

All day long and all night through, One thing only must I do: Quench my pride and cool my blood, Lest I perish in the flood. — Countee Cullen

The loss of love is a terrible thing; They lie who say that death is worse. — Countee Cullen

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind — Countee Cullen

I was reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage. — Countee Cullen

Whatever lives is granted breath But by the grace and sufferance of Death. — Countee Cullen

I cut my teeth as the black raccoon
For implements of battle. — Countee Cullen

Give but a grain of the heart's rich seed, Confine some under cover, And when love goes, bid him God-speed. And find another lover. — Countee Cullen

[W]e have always resented the natural inclination of most white people to demand spirituals the moment it is known that a Negro is about to sing. So often the request has seemed to savor of the feeling that we could do this and this alone. — Countee Cullen

What is last year's snow to me,
Last year's anything? The tree
Budding yearly must forget
How its past arose or set — Countee Cullen

And if I please you so, my lover,
Remember praise is comely. — Countee Cullen

Your love to me was like an unread book. — Countee Cullen

We were not made to eternally weep. — Countee Cullen

The key to all strange things is in thy heart ... / My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas. — Countee Cullen

There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call 'the breaks. — Countee Cullen

So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds, And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds. — Countee Cullen

Never love with all your heart, It only ends in aching. — Countee Cullen

The truth is ... everything counts. Everything. Everything we do and everything we say. Everything helps or hurts; everything adds to or takes away from someone else. — Countee Cullen

Not for myself I make this prayer, But for this race of mine That stretches forth from shadowed places Dark hands for bread and wine. — Countee Cullen

Man dreams that he is more than a leaf on a tree.'
-Leaves by Countee Cullen — Countee Cullen

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing. — Countee Cullen

In order for a writer to succeed, I suggest three things - read and write - and wait. — Countee Cullen

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? — Countee Cullen

If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET. — Countee Cullen