Quotes from Jean Toomer

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

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

We do not posses imagination enough to sense what we are missing.

To understand a new idea, break an old habit.

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

To understand a new idea, break an old habit.

Wind is in the cane. Come along.Cane leaves swaying, rusty with talk,Scratching choruses above the guinea's squawk,Wind is in the cane. Come along.

O can't you see it, O can't you see it,Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon… When the sun goes down.

A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,An orgy for some genius of the SouthWith blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth,Surprised in making folk songs from soul sounds.

No eyes that have seen beauty ever lose their sight.

I met a woman— Much that I am I owe to her, For she was going where I was going

Thunder blossoms gorgeously above our heads, Great, hollow, bell-like flowers, Rumbling in the wind, Stretching clappers to strike our ears. Full-lipped flowers Bitten by the sun Bleeding rain Dripping rain like golden honey— And the sweet earth flying from the thunder.

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

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

We do not posses imagination enough to sense what we are missing.

We learn the rope of life by untying its knots.

Her Lips Are Copper Wire" 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

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.

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

Call them from their houses, and teach them to dream.

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.

Whats beauty anyway but ugliness if it hurts you?

Talk about it only enough to do it. Dream about it only enough to feel it. Think about it only enough to understand it. Contemplate it only enough to be it.

Storm Ending Thunder blossoms gorgeously above our heads, Great, hollow, bell-like flowers, Rumbling in the wind, Stretching clappers to strike our ears . . . Full-lipped flowers Bitten by the sun Bleeding rain Dripping rain like golden honey— And the sweet earth flying from the thunder.