The Best Zora Neale Hurston quotes

If it was so honorable and glorious to be black, why was it the yellow–skinned people among us had so much prestige? — Zora Neale Hurston

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

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. — Zora Neale Hurston

Night came walking through Egypt swishing her black dress. — Zora Neale Hurston

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. — Zora Neale Hurston

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. — Zora Neale Hurston

I was born in a Negro town. — Zora Neale Hurston

I love myself when I am laughing. — Zora Neale Hurston

Gods always love the people who make em. — Zora Neale Hurston

I love myself when I am laughing. . . and then again when I am looking mean and impressive. — Zora Neale Hurston

When one is too old for love, one finds great comfort in good dinners. — Zora Neale Hurston

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. — Zora Neale Hurston

A woman robbed of her love is more terrible than an army with banners. — Zora Neale Hurston

I note that the Africa loves to depict the grace of reptiles. — Zora Neale Hurston

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

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

He looked like the love thoughts of women. — Zora Neale Hurston

Now they got to look into me loving Tea Cake and see whether it was done right or not! They don’t know if life is a mess of corn–meal dumplings, and if love is a bed–quilt! — Zora Neale Hurston

Perhaps I am just a coward who loves to laugh at life better than I do cry with it. But when I do get to crying, boy, I can roll a mean tear. — Zora Neale Hurston

I have a strong suspicion . that much that passes for constant love is a golded–up moment walking in its sleep. — Zora Neale Hurston

Love is like the sea. It’s a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore. — Zora Neale Hurston

Janie looked down on him and felt a self–crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place. — Zora Neale Hurston

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. — Zora Neale Hurston

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

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

A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it. — Zora Neale Hurston

Don’t you love nobody better’n you do yo’self. Do, you’ll be dying befo’ yo’ time is out. — Zora Neale Hurston

So Janie waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time. — Zora Neale Hurston

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. — Zora Neale Hurston

I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads. — Zora Neale Hurston

Ethical and cultural desegregation. It is a contradiction in terms to scream race pride and equality while at the same time spurning Negro teachers and self–association. — Zora Neale Hurston

She woke up in time to see the sun sending up spies ahead of him to mark out the road through the dark. He peeped up over the door sill of the world and made a little foolishness with red. — Zora Neale Hurston

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. — Zora Neale Hurston

It was the meanest moment of eternity. — Zora Neale Hurston

No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep. — Zora Neale Hurston

But as de old folk always say, Ah’m born but Ah ain’t dead. No tellin’ whut Ah’m liable tuh do yet. — Zora Neale Hurston

I want a busy lIfe, a just mInd, and a tImely death. — Zora Neale Hurston

She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her. — Zora Neale Hurston

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. — Zora Neale Hurston

Life is the flower for which love is the honey. — Zora Neale Hurston

Life, inexhaustible, goes on. And we do too. Carrying our wounds and our medicines as we go. — Zora Neale Hurston

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

So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see. — Zora Neale Hurston

Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches — Zora Neale Hurston

I been through living for years. I just ain’t dead yet. — Zora Neale Hurston

There are two things everybody got to find out for themselves. They got to find out about love and they got to find out about living. — Zora Neale Hurston

Folklore is the boiled–down juice, or pot–likker, of human living. — Zora Neale Hurston

Happiness is nothing but everyday living seen through a veil. — Zora Neale Hurston

The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. — Zora Neale Hurston