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"My appearance was always good and my ability to play on the piano, especially ragtime, which was then at the height of its vogue, made me a welcome guest."
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Exlpore more Ability quotes
"Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over."
"I like to think of sales as the ability to gracefully persuade, not manipulate, a person or persons into a win-win situation."
"A book comes and says, "Write me." My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate."
"If I drive myself to the brink of my ability, then I don't get stale or bored."
"The size of a fish does not determine its speed."
"Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or economic circumstances."
Explore more quotes by James Weldon Johnson
"Any musical person who has never heard a Negro congregation under the spell of religious fervor sing these old songs has missed one of the most thrilling emotions which the human heart may experience."
"My mother was kept very busy with her sewing; sometimes she would have another woman helping her."
"But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form."
"There are a great many colored people who are ashamed of the cake-walk, but I think they ought to be proud of it."
"I do not see how a people that can find in its conscience any excuse whatever for slowly burning to death a human being, or for tolerating such an act, can be entrusted with the salvation of a race."
"My luck at the gambling table was varied; sometimes I was fifty to a hundred dollars ahead, and at other times I had to borrow money from my fellow workmen to settle my room rent and pay for my meals."
"I had enjoyed life in Paris, and, taking all things into consideration, enjoyed it wholesomely."
"Americans are immensely popular in Paris; and this is not due solely to the fact that they spend lots of money there, for they spend just as much or more in London, and in the latter city they are merely tolerated because they do spend."
"Southern white people despise the Negro as a race, and will do nothing to aid in his elevation as such; but for certain individuals they have a strong affection, and are helpful to them in many ways."
"It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive character."
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