Picture this: Alabama, 1891, and a fiery spirit named Zora Neale Hurston is born into a world she's bound to shape with her vibrant tales and audacious perspectives. This extraordinary woman would grow up to challenge the societal norms of her time, becoming a leading voice in the Harlem Renaissance and leaving us with a treasure trove of literary works. More than that, though, she left us with a wealth of potent words that still resonate powerfully today. And that's what brings us here. Welcome to “50 Lively Zora Neale Hurston Quotes”—a collection that captures the essence of this incredible woman, her vivacious character, and her transformative insights into race, gender, and the human spirit.
Hurston's journey from her childhood in the rural South to becoming one of America's most influential African-American authors wasn't an easy one, but her resilience and determination are reflected in the compelling lines she penned. To dive into “Zora Neale Hurston Quotes” is to embark on an adventure through her world, one marked by courage, wit, and a remarkable talent for storytelling. These quotes are not just lines from her works—they're a testament to her life, an extension of her vibrant personality. They mirror the challenges she faced and the triumphs she celebrated. So buckle up, readers, for a journey into the rich universe of one of the 20th century's most dynamic literary voices.
Discovery and Self-Reflection
1. “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
2. “I love myself when I am laughing… and then again when I am looking mean and impressive.”
3. “No matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you.”
4. “I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes.”
5. “Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me.”
6. “I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”
7. “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
8. “The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.”
9. “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.”
10. “It is one of the blessings of this world that few people see visions and dream dreams.”
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Love and Relationships
- “Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.”
- “If you haven't got it, you can't show it. If you have got it, you can't hide it.”
- “She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.”
- “She didn’t read books so she didn’t know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.”
- “It seems to me that trying to live without friends is like milking a bear to get cream for your coffee.”
- “She had called her soul to come and see.”
- “He looked like the love thoughts of women.”
- “Love, I find, is like singing.”
- “She was the sum of his earnings. He added up the amount of meat and cloth and the other things that she had secured for him, and called the sum love.”
- “He could be a bee to a blossom — a pear tree blossom in the spring.”
Life and Struggles
- “It’s no use of talking unless people understand what you say.”
- “You've got to go there to know there.”
- “Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.”
- “So the brother in black offers to these United States the source of courage that endures, and laughter.”
- “But for the national welfare, it is urgent to realize that the minorities do think, and think about something other than the race problem.”
- “Anybody depending on somebody else's gods is depending on a fox not to eat chickens.”
- “Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and sweat, cry and sweat, pray and sweat!”
- “Those that don't got it, can't show it. Those that got it, can't hide it.”
- “It seems that fighting is a game where everybody is the loser.”
- “Gods always love the people who make em.”
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Femininity and Empowerment
- “A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.”
- “It was the meanest moment of eternity.”
- “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.”
- “She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her.”
- “Bitterness is the coward's revenge on the world for having been hurt.”
- “Women forget all the things they don't want toremember, and remember everything they don't want to forget.”
- “She didn’t read books so she didn’t know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.”
- “She was the sum of his earnings. He added up the amount of meat and cloth and the other things that she had secured for him, and called the sum love.”
- “She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.”
- “She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels.”
Storytelling and Writing
- “There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.”
- “Folklore is the arts of the people before they find out that there is any such thing as art, and they make it out of whatever they find at hand.”
- “Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.”
- “It was a weak spot in any nation to have a large body of disaffected people within its confusion.”
- “When one is too old for love, one finds great comfort in good dinners.”
- “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.”
- “Writing is a delicious agony.”
- “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.”
- “The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.”
- “It is the map that reveals what it is that the storyteller makes the people believe they have thought of themselves.”
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