Quotes from Zora Neale Hurston

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

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

you can't beat me and my prayers!

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

It costs you something to do good!

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

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

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

Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me. Slavery is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you.

De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see. Ah been prayin' fuh it tuh be different wid you.

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

"It's uh known fact, Pheoby, you got tuh go there tuh know there."

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

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

Women forget all those 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.

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

I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes…. I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

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.

I have been in Sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots.

I was a Southerner and had the map of Dixie on my tongue.

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

Love makes your soul crawl out of it's hiding place

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

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