Zora Neale Hurston Quotes
They sat on the boarding house porch and saw the sun plunge into the same crack in the earth from which the night emerged.
Love I find is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.
An envious heart makes a treacherous ear. They done 'heard' bout you just what they hope done happened.
No, I do not weep at the world. I'm too busy sharpening my oyster knife.
Love is like the sea. It's a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it's different with every shore.
They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down.
The sun, the hero of every day, the impersonal old man that beams as brightly on death as on birth, came up every morning and raced across the blue dome and dipped into the sea of fire every evening.
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.
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.
Pheoby's hungry listening helped Janie to tell her story.
Lack of power and opportunity passes off too often for virtue.
It was hard to love a woman that always made you feel so wishful.
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.
It troubled him to get used to the world one way and then suddenly have it turn different.
Grown people know that they do not always know the way of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof.
Now, women forget all the things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.
No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep.
Janie knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making.
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.
There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
Nanny's words made Janie's kiss across the gatepost seem like a manure pile after a rain
Women forget all the things they don't want to remember and remember everything they don't want to forget.
Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it's some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don't know nothin' but what we see.
There is nothing to make you like other human beings so much as doing things for them.
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.
They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty. A mood come alive. Words walking without master...
He was the average mortal. It troubled him to get used to the world one way and then suddenly have it turn different.
People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor.
Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.
No, I do not weep at the world – I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.
And I can't die easy thinking maybe the menfolks white or black is making a spit cup out of you. Have some sympathy for me. Put me down easy, Janie, I'm a cracked plate.
So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day.
It is one of the blessings of this world that few people see visions and dream dreams.
It's a funny thing, the less people have to live for, the less nerve they have to risk losing nothing.
A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.
So the brother in black offers to these United States the source of courage that endures, and laughter.
