"Any musical person who has never heard a Negro congregation under the spell of religious fervor sing these old songs has missed one of the most thrilling emotions which the human heart may experience."

--

Source : James Weldon Johnson, Sondra K. Wilson (1995). “The Selected Writings of James Weldon Johnson: Social, political, and literary essays”, p.349, Oxford University Press on Demand

James Weldon Johnson

#Song Quotes #Religious Quotes #Heart Quotes

“The seasons don't matter to most of us anymore except as spectacles. In my county and in many places around this part of the nation, the fair that once marked the harvest now takes place in late August, while tourist dollars are still in heavy circulation. Why celebrate the harvest when you harvest every week with a shopping cart?”
“When it looks at great accomplishments, the world, bent on simplifying its images, likes best to look at the dramatic, picturesquemoments experienced by its heroes.... But the no less creative years of preparation remain in the shadow.”
“One of the difficult things of so much travelling is to say goodbye.”
“Love for thy love , and hand for hand I give.”
“There are many possible interpretations of what it means to create dangerously, and Albert Camus, like the poet Osip Mandelstam, suggests that it is creating as a revolt against silence, creating when both the creation and the reception, the writing and the reading, are dangerous undertakings, disobedience to a directive.”
“I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.”
“Although professionals are able to extract a considerable amount of wealth from amateurs, few stock pickers, if any, have the skill needed to beat the market consistently, year after year.”
“It doesn’t make sense, it’s not logical, it’s not a safe profession or a smart profession if you wanna make money or have a living or have a family. So the fact that we keep doing [theatre] means we’re getting something from it that is almost childlike in its innocence.”

Source : "Lapine, Fontana, and Shalhoub Talk Moss Hart And ‘Act One’". Interview with Rob Weinert-Kendt, www.americantheatre.org. April 9, 2014.

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