Zora Neale Hurston Quotes

No man may make another free.

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

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

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

I hold that any religion that satisfies the individual urge is valid for that person.

want won't kill you half as quick as worry will.

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.

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.

You have no idea, sir, how difficult it is to be the victim of benevolence.

it seems that tears and laughter, love and hate, make up the sum of life!

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.

Faith hasn't got no eyes, but she's long-legged.

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

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.

Folklore is the boiled-down juice, or pot-likker, of human living.

Like the dead-seeming, cold rocks, I have memories within that came out of the material that went to make me. Time and place have had their say.

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

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

Perhaps love is a compelling necessity imposed on man by God that has something to do with suffering

If it was so honorable and glorious to be black, why was it the yellow-skinned people among us had so much prestige?

There is something about poverty that smells like death.

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.

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.

anytime you catch folks lying, they scared of something!

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

Taint no law on earth dat kin make a man be decent if it aint in 'im.

It costs you something to do good!

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

She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.

Every tub sits on its bottom.

Affection makes your spirit slither out from its concealing spot.

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

To avoid the consequences of posterity the mulattos give the blacks a first class letting alone. There is a frantic stampede white-ward to escape from Jamaica's black mass.

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

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

So Janie waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time.

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.

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

You heard me. You ain't blind.

[Proverbs] are short sayings made out of long experience.

Night came walking through Egypt swishing her black dress.

When we sing the blues, we're singin' out our hearts, we're singing out our feelings. Maybe we're hurt and just can't answer back, then we sing or maybe even hum the blues.

Most things are born in the mothering darkness and most things die. Darkness is the womb of creation, my boy. But the sun with his seven horns of flame is the father of life.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

But any man who walks in the way of power and property is bound to meet hate.