Negro Spirituals Quotes & Sayings

I'm an old fan of the Negro spirituals. — Norman Finkelstein

Christians and non-Christians have something in common. Were both uptight about evangelism. — Rebecca Pippert

A wound in the soul, coming from the rending of the spiritual body, strange as it may seem, gradually closes like a physical wound. And once a deep wound heals over and the edges seem to have knit, a wound in the soul, like a physical wound, can be healed only by the force of life pushing up from inside.
This was the way Natasha's wound healed. She thought her life was over. But suddenly her love for her mother showed her that the essence of life - love - was still alive in her. Love awoke, and life awoke. — Leo Tolstoy

Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it. — Jim Butcher

I have no praise anthems, nor old Negro spirituals. The spirit and soul are the body and brain, which are destructible - that is precisely why they are so precious. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Do you know most of the Jewish songs have the same trend of sadness as Negro spirituals? — Mahalia Jackson

It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us. — Maya Angelou

To be a clergyman, and all that is compassionate and virtuous, ought to be the same thing. — Samuel Richardson

My parents are highly evolved worriers ... If worrying were an Olympic sport, my parents' faces would have graced the Wheaties box a long time ago. — Firoozeh Dumas

One of the most beautiful things that recruited me to join the LaRouche movement is its emphasis on Classical singing and composition, especially with the Negro Spirituals, adding a new depth of profundity to songs I had sang while growing up. — Kesha Rogers

It's nice to play someone who functions in a very different way than I do. — Devin Kelley

You feel the last bit of breath leaving their body. You're looking into their eyes. A person in that situation is God! — Ted Bundy

Mind is just in the middle. You are nothing but a mess. If you can go beyond it, intelligence grows in you; if you go below it, any intelligence that you had disappears. — Rajneesh

[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

I first heard African drum rhythms and chants at the movies. Then, when I had the opportunity to go to Africa and visit the villages, I heard the real, raw, true rhythms and realised the origins of the old Negro spirituals I grew up with in the South. — Isaac Hayes