Zora Neale Hurston Quotes

“An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.”

“Bitterness is the coward's revenge on the world for having been hurt.”

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

“I love myself when I am laughing... and then again when I am looking mean and impressive.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.”

“Love, I find, is like singing.”

“No, I do not weep at the world. I'm too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“Acquiring the reading habit early is the important thing. Taste and natural development will take care of the rest later on.”

“I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of N*grohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it.

Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”

“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 a sword in my hands.”

“I made up my mind to keep my feelings to myself since they did not seem to matter to anyone else but 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. ”

“People can be slave ships in shoes.”

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

“All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion.

It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.”

“He looked like the love thoughts of women.”

“Her old thoughts were going to come in handy now, but new words would have to be made and said to fit them.”

“Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.”

“It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding.”

“It was the meanest moment of eternity.”