“Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.”

Suggesting that meaning may be discovered even in apparent nonsense · Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, dialogue

• Beauty
• Truth

“Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.”

A playful defence of meaning over mere verbal ornament · Through the Looking-Glass, dialogue

• Art
• Truth

“Colours are the smiles of nature.”

Finding a human warmth and expressiveness in the natural world · Prose essay

• Beauty
• Nature

“Curiosity is the thirst of the soul.”

Presenting curiosity as an essential appetite for knowledge and experience · Essay

• Beauty
• Truth

“Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy.”

Balancing the pleasures of rest with the need for purposeful activity · Essay / periodical prose

• Art
• Joy

“Life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may be successful, it must be habitual and uninterrupted.”

Suggesting that sustaining illusions is part of the human art of living · Essay

• Life
• Truth

“Every day is a little life: and our whole life is but a day repeated.”

A compact reflection on the value and brevity of ordinary time · Essay / prose miscellany

• Mortality
• Time

“We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame.”

Affirming self-expression, dignity, and artistic independence · Essay, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain

• Art
• Beauty

“The Negro artist works against an undertow of sharp criticism from his own group, and unintentional bribes from the whites.”

Describing the pressures confronting Black artists in America · Essay, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain

• Art
• Truth

“The artist must live and paint and write in freedom, and not be afraid of his own soul.”

Frequently attributed to Hughes, but the precise source wording is not consistently documented · Essay / statement on art

• Art
• Freedom

“I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.”

Expressing determination and faith in the possibility of progress · Autobiographical prose

• Hope
• Truth

“An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but also to never be afraid to do what he might choose.”

Defending artistic freedom and the courage to create without fear · Essay, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain

• Art
• Freedom

“I would rather be remembered as the author of The Land o' the Leal than of any other song.”

Expressing her special attachment to the song that became her enduring legacy · Biographical reminiscence

• Memory
• Mortality
• Music

“An infallible recipe for making a young man in love with you is to appear to him in a different dress every day.”

Using playful social observation to describe the workings of attraction · Letter or prose advice, commonly attributed

• Beauty
• Love

“Life is too short for a long face.”

Defending cheerfulness against needless solemnity · Conversation or letter, commonly attributed

• Joy
• Time

“To be angry is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves.”

Warning that anger harms the person who gives way to it · Prose writing, commonly attributed

• Joy
• Truth

“I have no notion of loving people by halves; it is not my nature. My attachments are always excessively strong.”

Expressing an uncompromising intensity in personal attachments · Letter, commonly attributed

• Friendship
• Love

“No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.”

Celebrating reading as an enduring and accessible pleasure · Letters and prose writings

• Art
• Joy
• Time

“The women of Ireland have always been the guardians of its faith and its traditions.”

Honouring women as custodians of cultural memory and spiritual life · Essayistic prose on Ireland

• Faith
• Memory

“The sorrows of the poor are often more picturesque than the joys of the rich.”

A striking contrast between hardship, sympathy, and social privilege · Commonly attributed observation

• Despair
• Truth

“The Irish peasant has a deep and abiding faith in the supernatural world.”

Recognising the imaginative and spiritual dimensions of rural life · Prose writing on Irish folklore

• Faith
• Nature

“The old beliefs, the old traditions, and the old legends of Ireland are not dead, but live in the hearts of the people.”

Affirming the continuity of cultural memory and inherited belief · Essayistic prose on Irish folklore

• Faith
• Memory

“A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her, but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.”

A sharp observation on pride, love, and the difficulty of accepting indebtedness · Commonly attributed aphorism

• Love
• Truth

“The song of Auld Robin Gray was written by me in 1771, when I was very young.”

A rare direct acknowledgement of authorship after years of keeping it private · Letter to Sir Walter Scott, 1823

• Memory
• Poetry