Zora Neale Hurston Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Zora Neale Hurston on Wise Famous Quotes.

Somebody wanted her to play. Somebody thought it natural for her to play.

Tell me, and then again show me, so I can know.

It was funny if you looked at it right quick, but it got pitiful if you thought about it awhile.

Sometimes she stuck out into the future, imagining her life different from what is was.

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

He was a glance from God.

Jeff Bruce threw in. Speakin' of winds, he's de wind and

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

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

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

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

If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk. It's so many people never seen de light at all.

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

I would like just a little of her sunshine to soak into my soul. I would like that a lot.

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

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

It is easy to be hopeful in the day when you can see the things you wish on.

Well, she thought, that big old dawg with the hatred in his eyes had killed her after all.

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

The mediocre have no importance except through appointment. They feel invaded and defeated by the presence of creative folk among them.

These two "speech communities," as it were, are Hurston's great sources of inspiration not only in her novels but also in her autobiography.

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

I love myself when I am laughing.

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

She left the porch pelting her back with unasked questions. They hoped the answers were cruel and strange.

I note that the Africa loves to depict the grace of reptiles.

Slogans can be worse than swords if they are only put in the right mouths.

You got de keys to de kingdom.

That was the rock she was battered against.

Janie, Ah hope God may kill me, if Ah'm lyin'. Nobody else on earth kin hold uh candle tuh you, baby. You got de keys to de kingdom.

Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me.

Affection makes your spirit slither out from its concealing spot.

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

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

My head was full of misty fumes of doubt.

Time makes everything old so the kissing, young darkness became a monstropolous old thing while Janie talked.

But stillness was the sleep of swords.

I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions.

You got to go there to know there.

She must talk to a man who was ten immensities away.

It was the meanest moment of eternity.

Everybody is two beings: one lives and flourishes in the daylight and stands guard. The other being walks and howls at night.

It was hard to love a woman that always made you feel so wishful.

Mind-pictures brought feelings, and feelings dragged out dramas from the hollows of the heart.

Gods always love the people who make em.

She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.

For what can excuse a man in the eyes of other men for lack of strength?

If you are silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it.

Tain't no trouble tuh say whut's already so.

Gods always behave like the people who make them.

The varicolored cloud dust that the sun has stirred up in the sky was settling by slow degrees.

When I pitched headforemost into the world I landed in the crib of Negroism.

Aw, git reconciled!.. You can't git her wid no fish sandwich.

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

He did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees, but he spoke for far horizon.

She was a wind on the ocean. She moved men, but the helm determined the port.

And listenin' tuh dat kind uh talk is jus' lak openin' yo' mouth and lettin' de moon shine down yo' throat.

The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky. It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road.

People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor.

The icy sword of the square-toed one had cut off his breath and left his hands in a pose of agonizing protest.

Unless you see de fur, a mink skin ain't no different from a coon hide.