Zora Neale Hurston Quotations

A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.

If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other folks then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding.

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.

It is one of the blessings of this world that few people see visions and dream dreams.

The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.

Gods always love the people who make 'em.

I do not weep at the world I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person. That is natural.

The Haitian people are gentle and lovable except for their enormous and unconscious cruelty.

Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and sweat, cry and sweat, pray and sweat!

Anybody depending on somebody else's gods is depending on a fox not to eat chickens.

It's a funny thing, the less people have to live for, the less nerve they have to risk losing nothing.

Those that don't got it, can't show it. Those that got it, can't hide it.

It seems to me that trying to live without friends is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble, and then not worth much after you get it.

Gods always behave like the people who make them.

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.

Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at the sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.

So the brother in black offers to these United States the source of courage that endures, and laughter.

I have been in Sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and sword in my hands.

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

The man who interprets Nature is always held in great honor.

No matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you.

It's no use of talking unless people understand what you say.

Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.

I did not just fall in love. I made a parachute jump.

When one is too old for love, one finds great comfort in good dinners.

Trees and plants always look like the people they live with, somehow.

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.

It would be against all nature for all the Negroes to be either at the bottom, top, or in between. We will go where the internal drive carries us like everybody else. It is up to the individual.

It seems that fighting is a game where everybody is the loser.

But for the national welfare, it is urgent to realize that the minorities do think, and think about something other than the race problem.

When a man keeps beating me to the draw mentally, he begins to get glamorous.

Love, I find, is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.

There is something about poverty that smells like death.

It was a weak spot in any nation to have a large body of disaffected people within its confusion.

...she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see...

Women forget all the things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget.

They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.

Once you wake up thought in a man, you can never put it to sleep again.

Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person.

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein.

Perhaps I am just a coward who loves to laugh at life better than I do cry with it. But when I do get to crying, boy, I can roll a mean tear.

A great state is a well-blended mash of something of all the people and all of none of the people. The liquor of statecraft is distilled from the mash you got.

For four hundred years the blacks of Haiti had yearned for peace. for three hundred years the island was spoken of as a paradise of riches and pleasures, but that was in reference to the whites to whom the spirit of the land gave welcome. Haiti has meant split blood and tears for blacks.

The sun had become a light yellow yolk and was walking with red legs across the sky.

An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.

God took pattern after a pine tree and built you noble.

I regret all of my books.

Now they got to look into me loving Tea Cake and see whether it was done right or not! They don't know if life is a mess of corn-meal dumplings, and if love is a bed-quilt!

We must learn to be honest with ourselves, and know our shortcomings. We will acquire cohesion but we will pay dearly for being a slow pupil.

Please God, please suh, don't let him love nobody else but me. Maybe Ah'm is uh fool, Lawd, lak dey say, but Lawd, Ah been so lonesome, and Ah been waitin', Jesus. Ah done waited uh long time.

Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept.

I have a strong suspicion . that much that passes for constant love is a golded- up moment walking in its sleep.

It must be recess in (heaven) if St. Peter is lettin his angels out.

She's got those big black eyes with plenty shiny white in them that makes them shine like brand new money and she knows what God gave women eyelashes for, too. Her hair is not what you might call straight. It's negro hair, but it's got a kind of white flavor. Like the piece of string out of a ham. It's not ham at all, but it's been around ham and got the flavor.

Magic is older than writing. So nobody knows how it started.

Light came to me when I realized that I did not have to consider any racial group as a whole. God made them duck by duck and that was the only way I could see them.

I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That's living.

There's two things everybody got to find out for themselves: they got to find out about love, and they got to find out about living. Now, love is like the sea. It's a moving thing. And it's different on every shore. And living... well... There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear, and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom.

I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads.

Now, suppose a Negro does something really magnificent, and I glory, not in the benefit to mankind, but in the fact that the doer was a Negro. Must I not also go hang my head in shame when a member of my race does something execrable? . . . The white race did not go into a laboratory and invent incandescent light. That was Edison. . . . If you are under the impression that every white man is an Edison, just look around a bit.

I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.

I will fight for my country, but I will not lie for her.

The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor.

When the people sat around on the porch and passed around the pictures of their thoughts for the others to look at and see, it was nice. The fact that the thought pictures were always crayon enlargements of life made it even nicer to listen to.

Every morning the world flung itself over and exposed the town to the sun.

Night came walking through Egypt swishing her black dress.

I don't know any more about the future than you do. I hope that it will be full of work, because I have come to know by experience that work is the nearest thing to happiness that I can find. . . I want a busy life, a just mind and a timely death.

He was the average mortal. It troubled him to get used to the world one way and then suddenly have it turn different.

There is nothing to make you like other human beings so much as doing things for them.

She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her.

Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves.

There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man's spice-box seasons his own food.

It is so easy to be hopeful in the daytime when you can see the things you wish on. But it was night, it stayed night. Night was striding across nothingness with the whole round world in his hands . . . They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against cruel walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.

Every tub sits on its bottom.

You heard me. You ain't blind.

Tea Cake, the son of the Evening Sun, had to die for loving her.

Lack of power and opportunity passes off too often for virtue.

It is hard to apply oneself to study when there is no money to pay for food and lodging. I almost never explain these things when folks are asking me why I don't do this or that.

Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.

She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.

She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered. But looking at it she saw that it never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just something she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over.

The morning air was like a new dress. That made her feel the apron tied around her waist. She untied it and flung it on a low bush beside the road and walked on, picking flowers and making a bouquet… From now on until death she was going to have flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything.

Look lak she been livin' through uh hundred years in January without one day of spring.

But as de old folk always say, Ah'm born but Ah ain't dead. No tellin' whut Ah'm liable tuh do yet.

It seemed to me that the human beings I met reacted pretty much the same to the same stimuli. Different idioms,yes. Circumstances and conditions having power to influence, yes. Inherent difference, no.

Tain't no use in you cryin' . . . But folks is meant to cry 'bout somethin' or other. Better leave things de way dey is. Youse young yet. No tellin' whut mout happen befo' you die.

It costs you something to do good!

It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding.

To a haughty belly, kindness is hard to swallow and harder to digest.

It seems like the first law of Nature is that everybody likes to receive things, but nobody likes to feel grateful.

I was born in a Negro town.

Friendship is a mysterious and ocean-bottom thing. Who can know the outer ranges of it? Perhaps no human being has ever explored its limits.

The liquor of statecraft is distilled from the mash you got.

That is the way with people ... If they do you wrong, they invent a bad name for you, a good name for their acts and then destroy you in the name of virtue.

Grown people know that they do not always know the why of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof. Hence the irritation they show when children keep on demanding to know if a thing is so and how the grown folks got the proof of it. It is so troublesome because it is disturbing to the pigeonhole way of life.

Don't you love nobody better'n you do yo'self. Do, you'll be dying befo' yo' time is out.

I wish I could buy you for what you are really worth and sell you for what you think you're worth. I sure would make money on the deal.