Quotes from Leopold Sedar Senghor

I have always taken care to put an idea or emotion behind my words. I have made it a habit to be suspicious of the mere music of words.

The [priest] was really my teacher, because I reacted against the things he told me.

For who else would teach rhythm to the world that has died of machines and cannons? For who else should ejaculate the cry of joy, that arouses the dead and the wise in a new dawn? Say, who else could return the memory of life to man with a torn hope?… They call us men of death. But we are the men of the dance whose feet only gain power when they beat the hard soil

Si je vais à la boulangerie et n'en ressors qu'avec le pain, j'ai loupé la vie.

Ils ont treize noms pour nommer le palmier, et le palmier n'est pas nommé.

Art is animated by invisible forces that rule the universe.

What if this were Hell, this absence of sleep, this poet's desert, this pain of living, this dying of not dying, this anguish of shadows, this passion over death and light.