African Spirit Quotes & Sayings

INTROSPECTION: LOOKING WITHIN
What is there to say about the inner life? It is as complex as the watery byways of Venice, Delicate as the hands of an infant child, Curious and compact as the wisdom of an acorn. It is as magnificent as the profile of an African queen.
It eludes comprehension and yet it is ever present, Enveloping every moment of life.
One lives from the inside out. A gnarl of emotion, biography, memory, and spirit. Each blending and bending into the other Like knotted strands of crocheted comforter. It is a world I will never truly understand, And yet the only reality I can ever know.
What — Karyn D. Kedar

Believe me, I know. I used to think that it only happened once, your single opportunity to make good. But now I think - no, know - that love is abundant. That's Glorianna's gift to us. That we love, over and over, many times and many people. You're one of them. I love you, Ash."
He crossed to me, tentative, and lifted his hands to cup my naked breasts. "Your tits are so much larger,"he commented. — Jeffe Kennedy

British physician, West African Countries and Peoples Man's place is higher than the sky. Respect for man is the underlying spirit of civilization. — Muhammad Iqbal

The first lesson in Christ's school is self-denial. — Matthew Henry

Although she missed the singing by the children from the school opposite her apartment, she didn't teach her own pupils to sing 'We Shall Overcome' in any language, because she wasn't sure that Overcoming was anywhere on anyone's horizon. — Arundhati Roy

The precept to worship God 'in spirit and in truth' recommand to worship him as an inward and moral force, without physical attributes and with no relation to fears and egoist wishes. — African Spir

Son, you won't need to talk to my headstone in order to talk to me. I won't be there. I'll be in the air and the Earth. I'll be in the stars that light the African heavens. I'll be watchin' over you and your family. My spirit will always be close enough to touch and protect you all. So, do not grieve for me. My body will die, but my soul will live on. For my soul cannot die. Always remember that my soul is the spark of God in me. — Randall Robinson

It's not how much we love things but how they change us. — Camila Cher Harmath

Everybody black knows how to react to a tragedy. Just bring out a wheelbarrow full of the Same Old Anger, dump it all over the Usual Frustration, and water it with Somebody Oughtas, all of which Bethella did. Then quietly set some globs of Genuine Awe in a circle around the mixture, but don't call too much attention to that. Mention the Holy Spirit whenever possible. — James Hannaham

To reform society, and with it humanity, there is only one mean; to transform the mentality of men, to direct them ("les orienter", Fr.) in a new spirit. — African Spir

If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it'd still be his. If the white man wasn't destined to take this new world, he wouldn't own it now.

Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor--if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative. — Colson Whitehead

Difficulties are not interruptions to our journey; they are part of it, as if they're part of the weave of the cloth of our lives. They weave in and become an essential part of the whole. Because the more challenges we face, the more capable we realize we are and the less there is to fear. — Kimora Lee Simmons

Literature doesn't have a country. Shakespeare is an African writer. His Falstaff, for example, is very African in his appetite for life, his largeness of spirit. The characters of Turgenev are ghetto dwellers. Dickens characters are Nigerians. — Ben Okri

I look at an ant and I see myself: a native South African, endowed by nature with a strength much greater than my size so I might cope with the weight of a racism that crushes my spirit. — Miriam Makeba

You and that amazing body of yours will be the cause of some too-appreciative witch's death. Maybe two witches." Or a dozen, her fire spirit hissed. — N.D. Jones

In romance, I can't stand this scenario: A woman is awakened to find a strange man in her bedroom - and then automatically finds him attractive. I'm sorry, but if I awoke to a strange man in my bedroom, I'd be reaching for a weapon - not admiring the view. — Kristin Nelson

Certainly being in California has encouraged a sustained commitment to rethinking the nature, purposes, and relevance of the contemporary arts, specifically music, for a society which by and large seems to manage quite well without them. — Brian Ferneyhough

McCain is completely against the sequester. It was one thing when we had a Democratic chair who was against it - all the Democrats were against it. But to have a Republican chair who is outspoken and strong against the sequester, who has the credentials in military issues - who is going to challenge him? — Tim Kaine

Our stories are timeless and tested. They are about us, a people of tremendous strength.Our songs are full of love and life - and the ups and downs of both. They are soulful with the rhythms of a heart that is in sync with nature and wonderment. Our struggles are real and rugged. They beckon our memory to the highest callings of the spirit, to help us rejoice and to overcome. — Deborah L. Parker

I should have had a circuitous answer; that was a non-answer. — Geraldine Ferraro

May we dedicate our lives to serving the Lord and not worry about offending the devil. — James E. Faust

For those who understand, no explanation is needed. For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

One might go on to say that perhaps justice fails to be done only if the concept we entertain of justice is retributive justice, whose chief goal is to be punitive, so that the wronged party is really the state, something impersonal, which has little consideration for the real victims and almost none for the perpetrator. We contend that there is another kind of justice, restorative justice, which was characteristic of traditional African jurisprudence. Here the central concern is not retribution or punishment. In the spirit of ubuntu, the central concern is the healing of breaches, the redressing of imbalances, the restoration of broken relationships, a seeking to rehabilitate both the victim and the perpetrator, who should be given the opportunity to be reintegrated into the community he has injured by his offense. — Desmond Tutu

Let me begin with a caveat to any and all who find these pages. Do not trust large bodies of water, and do not cross them. If you, dear reader, have an African hue and find yourself led toward water with vanishing shores, seize your freedom by any means necessary. And cultivate distrust of the colour pink. Pink is taken as the colour of innocence, the colour of childhood, but as it spills across the water in the light of the dying sun, do not fall into its pretty path. There, right underneath, lies a bottomless graveyard of children, mothers and men. I shudder to imagine all the Africans rocking in the deep. Every time I have sailed the seas, I have had the sense of gliding over the unburied.
Some people call the sunset a creation of extraordinary beauty, and proof of God's existence. But what benevolent force would bewitch the human spirit by choosing pink to light the path of a slave vessel? Do not be fooled by the pretty colour, and do not submit to its beckoning. — Lawrence Hill

You've no idea, the whole Army's obsessed with playing at soldiers ... — Tom Stoppard

My teeth ache, my gums hurt, and my cat is tearing me apart, wanting you in every way imaginable. Your body. Your magic. Your fire spirit. Your blood. — N.D. Jones