Claude McKay Quotes

• The shivering birds beneath the eaves Have sheltered for the night.
• The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet, A chafing savage, down the decent street; And passion rends my vitals as I pass, Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.
• Oh, I must keep my heart inviolate Against the potent poison of your hate.
• If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
• Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
• The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls, Devoured her with their eager, passionate gaze; But looking at her falsely-smiling face, I knew her self was not in that strange place.
• Deep in the secret chambers of my heart I muse my life-long hate, and without flinch I bear it nobly as I live my part.
• I have forgotten much, but still remember The poinsiana's red, blood-red in warm December.
• Oh some I know! I have embalmed the days, Even the sacred moments when we played, All innocent of passion, uncorrupt, At noon and evening in the flame-heart's shade.
• Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
• And, hungry for the old, familiar ways, I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.
• I know the dark delight of being strange, The penalty of difference in the crowd, The loneliness of wisdom among fools.
• Idealism is like a castle in the air if it is not based on a solid foundation of social and political realism.
• If a man is not faithful to his own individuality, he cannot be loyal to anything.
• Nations, like plants and human beings, grow. And if the development is thwarted they are dwarfed and overshadowed.
• Upon the clothes behind the tenement, That hang like ghosts suspended from the lines, Linking each flat, but to each indifferent, Incongruous and strange the moonlight shines.

claude mckay