Happy birthday, Jean Toomer! Here are some quotes from the author.

“Aim to encounter unknown difficulties that you may gain unexpected results.”

“We have many reformers, few transformers.”

“All our lives we have been waiting to live.”

“Everyone secretly expects and looks forward to the coming of some great event which will gloriously upset him.”

“Talk about it only enough to do it. Dream about it only enough to feel it. Think about it only enough to understand it. Contemplate it only enough to be it.”

“Man is a nerve of the cosmos, dislocated, trying to quiver into place.”

“Meet life’s terms but never accept them.”

“People mistake their limitations for high standards.”

“Acceptance of prevailing standards often means we have no standards of our own.”

“We learn the rope of life by untying its knots.”

“Call them from their houses, and teach them to dream.”

“Talk about it only enough to do it. Dream about it only enough to feel it. Think about it only enough to understand it. Contemplate it only enough to be it.”

“There is no such thing as happiness. Life bends joy and pain, beauty and ugliness, in such a way that no one may isolate them.”

“I am of no particular race. I am of the human race, a man at large in the human world, preparing a new race.

I am of no specific region. I am of earth.

I am of no particular class. I am of the human class, preparing a new class.

I am neither male nor female nor in-between. I am of sex, with male differentiations.

I am of no special field. I am of the field of being.”

“The earth, to man, is an infected planet.

The human world wants to hear what is wrong with it.

It is satisfied with the diagnosis.

It does not want to make effort attempting a basic cure.

Man has a stubborn will to circulate poison.”