“Prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart or soul to God, through Christ, in the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit.”

Defining prayer as an inward act of the whole person rather than merely spoken words · A Discourse Touching Prayer

• Faith
• Truth

“The right of revolution is sacred. It is the right of self-defence against tyranny.”

Defending resistance to oppression as a moral and civic right · Essay or political writing (commonly attributed)

• Truth
• War

“The mind of man is the great object of dramatic imitation.”

Presenting human nature and its passions as the central subject of drama · Preface to A Series of Plays

• Art
• Poetry
• Truth

“I am not a Negro. I am not a white man. I am a man.”

Rejecting racial categories in favour of a wider human identity · Letter / personal statement, as commonly attributed

• Identity
• Truth

“I have lived to know that the secret of happiness is never to allow your energies to stagnate.”

Presenting happiness as an active practice rather than a passive state · Prose writing, commonly attributed to Jean Ingelow

• Hope
• Joy

“How much I dread the thought of any body’s marrying who is not in love.”

Affirming love as the essential foundation of marriage · Letter to Fanny Knight

• Hope
• Love

“A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.”

A characteristically dry observation on money and contentment · Letter to Cassandra Austen

• Joy
• Truth

“I am not at all in a humour for writing; I must write on till I am.”

Capturing the persistence required to recover creative momentum · Letter to Cassandra Austen

• Art
• Poetry

“The best of all things is to be natural.”

The attribution is widespread but a definitive primary source is unclear · Prose remark, commonly attributed

• Beauty
• Truth

“The more you talk about your troubles, the more troubles you have to talk about.”

Popularly attributed to Riley, but the primary source is not securely established · Prose remark, commonly attributed

• Despair
• Truth

“There is no man living that can not do more than he thinks he can.”

Encouraging confidence in one’s untapped abilities · Prose remark, commonly attributed

• Hope
• Truth

“The coloured people of the United States are the only people in the world who are not permitted to forget that they are coloured.”

Describing the persistent pressure of racial categorisation in American life · Essay / public commentary

• Truth
• War

“The Negro is the only race in the world that has a song.”

Celebrating the distinctive expressive power of Black musical culture · Essay / cultural criticism

• Joy
• Music

“The Negro's greatest contribution to American civilization has been in the field of music.”

Recognising music as a central contribution of Black American culture · Essay / cultural criticism

• Art
• Music

“The Negro in the United States is not a racial problem. He is a human problem.”

Rejecting the treatment of racial injustice as an abstract or separate issue · Essay

• Truth
• War

“The future of the Negro in this country is precisely as bright or dark as the future of the country.”

Linking Black freedom to the moral and political future of the United States · Essay / public address

• Hope
• Truth
• War

“The imagination is the one thing besides honesty that a human being should have.”

Linking creative vision with moral integrity · Prose remark, commonly attributed to James Stephens

• Art
• Truth

“The poet is a person who is always in love with something.”

Presenting poetry as an expression of sustained attachment and wonder · Prose remark, commonly attributed to James Stephens

• Love
• Poetry

“Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.”

A distinction between controllable talent and the compelling force of genius. · My Study Windows (1871), essay “Dante”

• Art
• Poetry

“Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.”

Giving moral action precedence over fine words · Essay, commonly attributed

• Beauty
• Truth

“Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.”

Celebrating books as agents of intellectual connection · Essay on books and libraries

• Art
• Friendship

“Democracy is the form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.”

A wry observation on the responsibilities and contradictions of popular government · Political commentary, commonly attributed

• Truth
• War

“The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.”

A sharp defence of intellectual growth and self-correction · Essay / My Study Windows

• Time
• Truth

“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.”

A concise contrast between imagined future happiness and the practice of cultivating it in the present · Prose remark, commonly attributed to James Oppenheim

• Hope
• Joy
• Time