Quotes By Zora Neale Hurston

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.

Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and sweat, cry and sweat, pray and sweat!

I regret all of my books.

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.

It costs you something to do good!

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.

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.

The Haitian people are gentle and lovable except for their enormous and unconscious cruelty.

People can be slave-ships in shoes.

No man may make another free.

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

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

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

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.

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.

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

When one is too old for love, one finds great comfort in good dinners.

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

I do not weep at the world I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

Anybody depending on somebody else's gods is depending on a fox not to eat chickens.

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

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

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.

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

Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person. That is natural.

It seems that fighting is a game where everybody is the loser.

It would be against all nature for all the Negroes to be either at the bottom, top, or in between. We will go where the internal drive carries us like everybody else. It is up to the individual.

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

Gods always behave like the people who make them.

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