Zora Neale Hurston Quotes

26 quotes

African American folklorist, novelist, short story writer, and Civic Rights advocate

“Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.”

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

on Love

"Grown people know that they do not always know the way of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof."

on Knowledge

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

on Nature

"Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place."

on Love

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

on Relationships

"Once you wake up thought in a man you can never put it to sleep again."

on Philosophy

"No, I do not weep at the world – I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife."

on Self Awareness

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."

on Time

"No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep."

on Time

"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."

on Love

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

on Truth

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

on Time

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

on Courage

"...you got tuh go there tuh know there."

on Life

"Lack of power and opportunity passes off too often for virtue."

on Power

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

on Wisdom

"I want a busy life a just mind and a timely death."

on Death

"I love myself when I am laughing."

on Love

"Faith hasn't got no eyes but she's long-legged."

on Faith

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

on Time