Claude McKay Quotes

Claude McKay shares vivid, poetic musings on nature and longing, drawing you into tender, textured scenes.

24 quotes

1. The shivering birds beneath the eaves Have sheltered for the night.

2. 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.

3. Oh, I must keep my heart inviolate Against the potent poison of your hate.

4. 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!

5. 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!

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. I have forgotten much, but still remember The poinsiana's red, blood-red in warm December.

9. 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.

10. Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

11. And, hungry for the old, familiar ways, I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.

12. I know the dark delight of being strange, The penalty of difference in the crowd, The loneliness of wisdom among fools.

13. Idealism is like a castle in the air if it is not based on a solid foundation of social and political realism.

14. If a man is not faithful to his own individuality, he cannot be loyal to anything.

15. Nations, like plants and human beings, grow. And if the development is thwarted they are dwarfed and overshadowed.

16. 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.

17. Human dignity is more precious than prestige…

18. Adventure-seasoned and storm-buffeted, I shun all signs of anchorage, because The zest of life exceeds the bound of laws.

19. If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, If we must die, O let us nobly die.

20. We are like trees. We wear all colors naturally.

21. It's when you are down that you learn about your faults.

22. If we must die, O let us nobly die.

23. “Newton appeared more nervously emphatic in his manner since Sunday when the Senegambians left him in his underwear and Delta had to hurry down to bring him another suit. Before his wife arrived the superintendent had removed the gag from his mouth and the experience had apparently made him more loquacious. He felt as if he had earned his medal as a hero of the cause. He talked unceasingly, agitating his hands.”

24. “The Europeans fight to exterminate us and call it civilizing us.”