100 Zora Neale Hurston Quotes To Inspire Budding Bookworms
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Born on 7 January 1891, Zora Neale Hurston was a renowned novelist and anthropologist.
As one of the most important and famous Black writers of all time Zora Neale Hurston has inspired many people. However, Neale Hurston gained the majority of her popularity after she died in 1960, meaning she was unable to enjoy her huge success in her own lifetime.
Zora Neale Hurston wrote various short stories, novels and plays depicting the lives of African Americans in the South and portraying racial struggles. Zora Neale’s novel which gained the most popularity is ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
Her other famous work includes ‘Sweat’ and ‘Jonah’s Gourd Vine’. ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ was written by Zora Neale Hurston when she traveled to Haiti.
Many Zora Neale Hurston poems also became famous during the time of the Harlem renaissance. In this article, you will find some quotes from Zora Neale Hurston famous poems and Zora Neale Hurston love poems as well as plenty more Zora Neale Hurston quotes.
For more inspiration, you can also check out [Black history inspirational quotes] and Alice Walker quotes.
‘Dust Tracks On A Road’ Quotes
‘Dust Tracks On A Road’ is an autobiography by Zora Neale Hurston. This book was also praised by the critics of Zora Neale Hurston. Given below are a list of Zora Neale Hurston famous quotes from ‘Dust Tracks On A Road’.
1. “I made up my mind to keep my feelings to myself since they did not seem to matter to anyone else but me.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Dust Tracks On A Road'.
2. “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.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Dust Tracks On A Road'.
3. “I don't know any more about the future than you do. I hope that it will be full of work, because I have come to know by experience that work is the nearest thing to happiness that I can find.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Dust Tracks On A Road'.
4. “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, 'Dust Tracks On A Road'.
5. “My head was full of misty fumes of doubt.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Dust Tracks On A Road'.
6. “So I do not pray. I accept the means at my disposal for working out my destiny. It seems to me that I have been given a mind and will power for that very purpose.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Dust Tracks On A Road'.
7. “It seemed to me that the human beings I met reacted pretty much the same to the same stimuli. Different idioms, yes. Circumstances and conditions having power to influence, yes. Inherent difference, no.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Dust Tracks On A Road'.
8. “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.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Dust Tracks On A Road'.
‘Sweat’ By Zora Neale Hurston Quotes
‘Sweat’ is a story about a strong woman character.
9. “Finally, she grew quiet. After that, coherent thought. With this, stalked through her a cold, bloody rage; hours of this; a period of introspection; a space of retrospection; then a mixture of both. Out of this, an awful calm.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Sweat'.
10. “Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and sweat, cry and sweat, pray and sweat!”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Sweat'.
'Their Eyes Were Watching God' Quotes
‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ is a story of a Black woman, Janie Crawford, looking for love and happiness written by Zora Neale Hurston. The book is one of the most famous works of Hurston today. Listed below are some amazing quotes from it.
11. “They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
12. “She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
13. “She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
14. “Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
15. “The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
16. “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
17. “Oh to be a pear tree - any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world!”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
18. “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.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
19. “She didn't read books so she didn't know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
20. “Janie knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
21. “She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
22. “It was the meanest moment of eternity.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
23. “If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk. It's so many people never seen de light at all.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
24. “Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
25. “No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
26. “People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
Zora Neale Hurston Quotes On Love
Love is one theme that most writers write about.
27. “Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'.
28. “I love myself when I am laughing.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘I Love Myself’.
29. “I did not just fall in love. I made a parachute jump.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘I Love Myself’.
30. “Love makes your soul crawl out of its hiding place.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘I Love Myself’.
31. “Don't you love nobody better'n you do yo'self. Do, you'll be dying befo' yo' time is out.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'.
32. “She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'.
33. “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, 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'.
34. “Perhaps love is a compelling necessity imposed on man by God that has something to do with suffering.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘The Complete Stories’.
35. “Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'.
36. “When one is too old for love, one finds great comfort in good dinners.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘I Love Myself’.
37. “Love, I find, is like singing.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'.
Zora Neale Hurston Quotes On Women
A list of quotes on strong women by Zora Neale Hurston are listed below.
38. “He looked like the love thoughts of women.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'.
39. “She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'.
40. “Somebody got to think for women and chillum and chickens and cows. I god, they sho don’t think none themselves.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'.
41. “Now, women forget all the 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.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'.
42. “She wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'.
43. “It is a curious thing to be a woman in the Caribbean after you have been a woman in these United States.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'.
44. “Her old thoughts were going to come in handy now, but new words would have to be made and said to fit them.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'.
45. “Seeing the woman as she was made them remember the envy they had stored up from other times.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'.
46. “...she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see...”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'.
Zora Neale Hurston Quotes On Race
Being a Black woman, Zora Neale Hurston has written many quotes on racism, and we have compiled a list of Hurston quotes on race.
47. “I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘How It Feels To Be Colored Me’.
48. “There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘How It Feels To Be Colored Me’.
49. “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.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘How It Feels To Be Colored Me’.
50. “Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘How It Feels To Be Colored Me’.
51. “All my skinfolk ain't kinfolk.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘How It Feels To Be Colored Me’.
52. “There is something about poverty that smells like death. Dead dreams dropping off the heart, live leaves in a dry season and rotting around the feet.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘How It Feels To Be Colored Me’.
53. “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘How It Feels To Be Colored Me’.
Zora Neale Hurston Quotes From ‘Let The Deal Go Down’
Given below are some quotes from the famous poem by Zora Neale Hurston.
54. “Let the deal go down boys, Let the deal go down.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Let The Deal Go Down'.
55. “There you go Blue Front,
I’ll show you about getting a card and telling a lie about it."
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Let The Deal Go Down'.
56. “I ain’t got no money, Lord, partner.
I ain’t got no change.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Let The Deal Go Down'.
57. “Put up some more money!”
-Zora Neale Hurston, 'Let The Deal Go Down'.
Powerful Zora Neale Hurston Quotes
Zora Neale Hurston was a powerful woman known for her powerful words. A list of such powerful Zora Neale Hurston quotes, like the famous "some years ask questions" quote is given below.
58. “Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person. That is natural.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
59. “Gods always behave like the people who make them.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
60. “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.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
61. “If writers were too wise, perhaps no books would get written at all. It might be better to ask yourself 'why?' afterwards than before. There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Dust Tracks On A Road’.
62. “Faith hasn't got no eyes but she's long-legged.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
63. “Half Gods are worshipped with wine and flowers. Real Gods require blood.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
64. “Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Dust Tracks On A Road’.
65. “There's 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, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
66. “No matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
67. “A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Dust Tracks On A Road’.
68. “It seems that fighting is a game where everybody is the loser.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Dust Tracks On A Road’.
69. “It costs you something to do good!”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Dust Tracks On A Road’.
70. “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, ‘Moses: Man Of The Mountain’.
71. “It is one of the blessings of this world that few people see visions and dream dreams.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘I Love Myself’.
72. “It's a funny thing, the less people have to live for, the less nerve they have to risk losing nothing.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘I Love Myself’.
73. “Taint no law on earth dat kin make a man be decent if it aint in 'im.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘I Love Myself’.
74. “Lack of power and opportunity passes off too often for virtue.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘I Love Myself’.
‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ Race Quotes
Two quotes from ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ about race are given below.
75. “We’se uh mingled people and all of us got black kinfolks as well as yaller kinfolks.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
76. “De ones de white man knows is nice colored folks.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
Zora Neale Hurston Quotes On Thoughtfulness
Some quotes Zora Neale Hurston quotes on thoughtfulness are given below.
77. “Happiness is nothing but everyday living seen through a veil.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Moses: Man Of The Mountain’.
78. “Everybody has some special road of thought along which they travel when they are alone to themselves. And his road of thought is what makes every man what he is.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Dust Tracks On A Road’.
79. “There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
80. “I have been amazed by the Anglo-Saxon's lack of curiosity about the internal lives and emotions...”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘How It Feels To Be Colored Me’.
Zora Neale Hurston Quotes From ‘How It Feels To Be Colored Me’
‘How It Feels To Be Colored Me’ is an essay written by Zora Neale Hurston about her experiences as a Black African-American woman.
81. “He has only heard what I felt.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘How It Feels To Be Colored Me’.
82. “I am not tragically colored. I do not mind at all.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘How It Feels To Be Colored Me’.
83. “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?”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘How It Feels To Be Colored Me’.
84. “Music. The great blobs of purple and red emotion have not touched him. He has only heard what I felt.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘How It Feels To Be Colored Me’.
85. “I do not always feel colored. Even now I often achieve the unconscious Zora of Eatonville before the Hegira.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘How It Feels To Be Colored Me’.
Zora Neale Hurston Quotes On Life Values
Some famous quotes by Zora Neale Hurston on various life values like kindness, love, benevolence and gratefulness are given below.
86. “It seems that tears and laughter, love and hate, make up the sum of life!”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
87. “It seems like the first law of Nature is that everybody likes to receive things, but nobody likes to feel grateful.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Moses: Man Of The Mountain’.
88. “To a haughty belly, kindness is hard to swallow and harder to digest.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
89. “You have no idea, sir, how difficult it is to be the victim of benevolence.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
90. “I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Dust Tracks On A Road’.
91. “Silence is all the genius a fool has.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Moses: Man Of The Mountain’.
92. “Justice, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Dust Tracks On A Road’.
93. “If you haven't got it, you can't show it. If you have got it, you can't hide it.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Dust Tracks On A Road’.
94. “Such as I am, I am a precious gift.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Dust Tracks On A Road’.
95. “An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
96. “It is easy to be hopeful in the day when you can see the things you wish on.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
97. “I want a busy life, a just mind, and a timely death.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Dust Tracks On A Road’.
98. “Bitterness is the coward's revenge on the world for having been hurt.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
99. “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’.
100. “Learning without wisdom is a load of books on a donkey's back.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Moses: Man Of The Mountain’.
Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for 100 Zora Neale Hurston quotes to inspire budding bookworms, then why not take a look at these Zadie Smith quotes or [empower women quotes] for more?
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Bachelor of Arts specializing in French with Film Studies, Bachelor of Arts (Year Abroad) specializing in Literature, History, Language, Media, and Art
Georgia StoneBachelor of Arts specializing in French with Film Studies, Bachelor of Arts (Year Abroad) specializing in Literature, History, Language, Media, and Art
Georgia is an experienced Content Manager with a degree in French and Film Studies from King's College London and Bachelors degree from Université Paris-Sorbonne. Her passion for exploring the world and experiencing different cultures was sparked during her childhood in Switzerland and her year abroad in Paris. In her spare time, Georgia enjoys using London's excellent travel connections to explore further afield.
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