Jean Toomer Quotes

The only way to seek God is to seek God first. Deny the nayward, affirm the yeaward, be true to those stirrings and motions which He starts in us, refuse priority to all else, and be faithful to the sacred.

Acceptance of prevailing standards often means we have no standards of our own.

The Gods Are Here"

This is no mountain
But a house,
No rock of solitude
But a family chair,
No wilds
But life appearing
As life anywhere domesticated,
Yet I know the gods are here,
And that if I touch them
I will arise
And take majesty into the kitchen.

But words is like th spots on dice: no matter how y fumbles em,
there's times when they jes wont
come.

Her own glowing is too rich a thing to let her feel the slimness of his diluted passion.

The realization of ignorance is the first act of knowing.

In my body were many bloods, some dark blood, all blended in the fire of six or more generations. I was, then, either a new type of man or the very oldest. In any case I was inescapably myself. . . . If I achieved greatness of human stature, then just to the degree that I did I would justify all the blood in me. If I proved worthless, then I would betray all. In my own mind I could not see the dark blood as something quite different and apart. But if people wanted to say this dark blood was Negro blood and if they then wanted to call me a Negro - this was up to them. Fourteen years of my life I had lived in the white group, four years I had lived in the colored group. In my experience there had been no main difference between the two. But if people wanted to isolate and fasten on those four years and to say that therefore I was colored, this too was up to them. . . .I determined what I would do. To my real friends of both groups, I would, at the right time, voluntarily define my position. As for people at large, naturally I would go my way and say nothing unless the question was raised. If raised, I would meet it squarely, going into as much detail as seemed desirable for the occasion. Or again, if it was not the person's business I would either tell him nothing or the first nonsense that came into my head.

You are the most sleepiest man I ever seed.

One may receive the information but miss the teaching.

In a sick world, it is the first duty of the artist to get well.

Happy, Muriel? No, not happy. Your aim is wrong. There is no such thing as happiness. Life bends joy and pain, beauty and ugliness, in such a way that no one may isolate them. No one should want to. Perfect joy, or perfect pain, with no contrasting element to define them, would mean a monotony of consciousness, would mean death.

I am not less poet; I am more conscious of all that I am, am not, and might become.

O singers, resinous and soft your songsAbove the sacred whisper of the pines,Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines,Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs.

Thank everyone who calls out your faults, your anger, your impatience, your egotism; do this consciously, voluntarily.

I am of no particular race. I am of the human race, a man at large in the human world, preparing a new race.

I am of no specific region. I am of earth.

I am of no particular class. I am of the human class, preparing a new class.

I am neither male nor female nor in-between. I am of sex, with male differentiations.

I am of no special field. I am of the field of being.

No eyes that have seen beauty ever lose their sight.

Men are apt to idolize or fear that which they cannot understand, especially if it be a woman.

Whisper of yellow globes
gleaming on lamp posts that sway
like bootleg licker drinkers in the fog
and let your breath be moist against me
like bright beads on yellow globes
telephone the power-house
that the main wires are insulate
(her words play up and down
dewy corridors of billboards)
then with your tongue remove the tape
and press your lips to mine
till they are incandescent

People mistake their limitations for high standards.

We never know we are beings till we love. And then it is we know the powers and potentialities of human existence.

There is no such thing as happiness. Life bends joy and pain, beauty and ugliness, in such a way that no one may isolate them.

To understand a new idea, break an old habit.

Night winds in Georgia are vagrant poets, whispering.

Dusk, suggesting the almost imperceptible posession of giant trees, settled with a purple haze about the cane. I felt strange, as I always do in Georgia, particularly at dusk. I felt that things unseen to men were tangibly immediate. It would not have surprised me had I had a vision.

Perhaps ... our lot on the earth is to seek and to search. Now and again we find just enough to enable us to carry on. I now doubt that any of us will completely find and be found in this life.

Muriel seeks happiness and beauty. Dan informs her that life is a balance between the two, between suffering and laughter, beauty and ugliness. 'There is no such thing as happiness. Life bends joy and pain, beauty and ugliness, in such a way that no one may isolate them. No one should want to. Perfect joy, or perfect pain, with no contrasting element to define them, would mean a monotony of consciousness, would mean death. Not happy, Muriel. Say that you have tried to make them CREATE.

Most novices picture themselves as masters - and are content with the picture. This is why there are so few masters.

Thunder blossoms gorgeously above our heads,
Great, hollow, bell-like flowers

Beehive"

Within this black hive to-night
There swarm a million bees;
Bees passing in and out the moon,
Bees escaping out the moon,
Bees returning through the moon,
Silver bees intently buzzing,
Silver honey dripping from the swarm of bees.
Earth is a waxen cell of the world comb,
And I, a drone,
Lying on my back,
Lipping honey,
Getting drunk with silver honey,
Wish that I might fly out past the moon
And curl forever in some far-off farmyard flower.

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If you have heard a Jewish cantor sing, if he has touched you and made your own sorrow seem trivial when compared with his, you will know my feeling when I follow the curves of her profile, like mobile rivers, to their common delta.

O land and soil, red soil and sweet-gum tree,
So scant of grass, so profligate of pines