James Baldwin quotes

This was the story of innumerable shepherds who failed, in their arrogance, to feed the hungry sheep; of many a father and mother who gave their children not bread but a stone, who offered not the truth of God but the tinsel of this world.

At length, she lay beside him like a burden laid down at evening which must be picked up once more in the morning.

She was descending with Richard to the sea. She would have to climb back up alone, but she did not know this then.

Then John knew that a curse was renewed from moment to moment, from father to son. Time was indifferent, like snow and ice; but the heart, crazed wanderer in the driving waste, carried the curse for ever.

For him there was the back door, and the dark stairs, and the kitchen or the basement. This world was not for him. If he refused to believe, and wanted to break his neck trying, then he could try until the sun refused to shine; they would never let him enter.

Men spoke of how the heart broke up, but never spoke of how the soul hung speechless in the pause, the void, the terror between the living and the dead; how, all garments rent and cast aside, the naked soul passed over the very mouth of Hell.

Yes, the darkness hummed with murder: the body in the water, the body in the fire, the body on the tree.

Folks ain’t got no time for the Lord, one day He ain’t going to have no time for them.

Their singing caused him to believe in the presence of the Lord; indeed, it was no longer a question of belief, because they made that presence real.

It was his hatred and his intelligence that he cherished, the one feeding the other.

These glories were unimaginable—but the city was real.

Me and the Lord, he had often said, don’t always get along so well. He running the world like He thinks I ain’t got good sense.

For the moment of salvation is a blinding light, cracking down into the heart from Heaven—Heaven so high, and the sinner so low.

For the rebirth of the soul was perpetual; only rebirth every hour could stay the hand of Satan.

Even a Reverend’s got the right to take off his clothes sometimes and act like a natural man.

I was down in the valley, I was by myself down there. I won’t never forget. May God forget me if I forget.

I guess it takes a holy man to make a girl a real whore.

Listen. God is talking.

When we cease to tremble before Him we have turned out of the way.

Your Daddy beats you, she said, because he loves you.

Broadway: the way that led to death was broad, and many could be found thereon; but narrow was the way that led to life eternal, and few there were who found it.

She had fallen from that high estate which God had intended for men and women, and she made her fall glorious because it was so complete.

But ain’t no use to try to take the whole world with you. You can’t change nothing, Gabriel.

The Lord was riding on the wind to-night. What might that wind have spoken before the morning came?

Ten years. Their battle never ended; they never bought a home. He died in France.