English En
  • Deutsche De
  • English En
  • Français Fr
  • Русский Ru

We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our marketing and analytics partners who may combine it with other information you've provided to them or which they've separately collected from you. You also may to see our Privacy Policy. By clicking the OK button below, you accept our cookies.

Authors:

Ralph Ellison quotes

American Author March 1, 1914 – April 16, 1994

Cite this Page: Citation

Quotes

Perhaps everyone loved someone; I didn't now, I couldn't give much thought to love; in order to travel far you had to be detached, and I had the long road back to the campus before me. Ralph Ellison
Ralph Ellison quote: "God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and..."
God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity. Ralph Ellison
For, like almost everyone else in our country, I started out with my share of optimism. I believed in hard work and progress and action, but now, after first being 'for' society and then 'against' it, I assign myself no rank or any limit, and such an attitude is very much against the trend of the times. But my world has become one of infinite possibilities. What a phrase - still it's a good phrase and a good view of life, and a man shouldn't accept any other; that much I've learned... Ralph Ellison
I feel the need to reaffirm all of it, the whole unhappy territory and all the things loved and unloveable in it, for it is all part of me. Ralph Ellison
It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to... Ralph Ellison
Ralph Ellison quote: "The understanding of art depends finally upon one's..."
The understanding of art depends finally upon one's willingness to extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of human life. Ralph Ellison
You start Saul, and end up Paul,' my grandfather had often said. 'When you're a youngun, you Saul, but let life whup your head a bit and you starts to trying to be Paul? though you still Sauls around on the side. Ralph Ellison
Ralph Ellison quote: "Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by..."
Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. Ralph Ellison
Ralph Ellison quote: "Boo'ful," she said, "life could be so diff'ren?"But it never..."
Boo'ful," she said, "life could be so diff'ren?"But it never is," I said. Ralph Ellison
Ralph Ellison quote: "Do they come to bury the others or to be entombed to give life..."
Do they come to bury the others or to be entombed to give life or to receive it? Ralph Ellison
But what a feeling can come over a man just from seeing the things he believes in and hopes for symbolized in the concrete form of a man. In something that gives a focus to all the other things he knows to be real. Something that makes unseen things manifest and allows him to come to his hopes and dreams through his outer eye and through the touch and feel of his natural hand. Ralph Ellison
At best Americans give but a limited attention to history. Too much happens too rapidly, and before we can evaluate it, or exhaust its meaning or pleasure, there is something new to concern us. Ours is the tempo of the motion picture, not that of the still camera, and we waste experience as we wasted the forest. Ralph Ellison
I remember that I'm invisible and walk softly so as not awake the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers. Ralph Ellison
I'd like to hear five recordings of Louis Armstrong playing and singing "What Did I Do to Be so Black and Blue"-all at the same time. Sometimes now I listen to Louis while I have my favorite dessert of vanilla ice cream and sloe gin. I pour the red liquid over the white mound, watching it glisten and the vapor rising as Louis bends that military instrument into a beam of lyrical sound. Ralph Ellison
Ralph Ellison quote: "We look too much to museums. The sun coming up in the morning..."
We look too much to museums. The sun coming up in the morning is enough. Ralph Ellison

Popular Author

Related Authors