Zora Neale Hurston Quotes
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It seems to me to be true that heavens are placed in the sky because it is the unreachable. The unreachable and therefore the unknowable always seems divine--hence, religion. People need religion because the great masses fear life and its consequences. Its responsibilities weigh heavy. Feeling a weakness in the face of great forces, men seek an alliance with omnipotence to bolster up their feeling of weakness, even though the omnipotence they rely upon is a creature of their own minds. It gives them a feeling of security.
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The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.
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you can't beat me and my prayers!
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Tain't no use in you cryin' . . . But folks is meant to cry 'bout somethin' or other. Better leave things de way dey is. Youse young yet. No tellin' whut mout happen befo' you die.
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I been through living for years. I just ain't dead yet.
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I do not weep at the world I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.
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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.
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There is nothing to make you like other human beings so much as doing things for them.
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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.
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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.
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A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.
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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.
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I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother's side was not an Indian chief.
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I do not pray. . . . I do not expect God to single me out and grant me advantages over my fellow men. . . . Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility.
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Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men? The wide belt of the universe has no need for finger-rings. I am one with the infinite and need no other assurance.
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The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor.
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It is one of the blessings of this world that few people see visions and dream dreams.
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Don't you realize that the sea is the home of water? All water is off on a journey unless it's in the sea, and it's homesick, and bound to make its way home someday.
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Folklore is the boiled-down juice, or pot-likker, of human living.
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To a haughty belly, kindness is hard to swallow and harder to digest.
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Slogans can be worse than swords if they are only put in the right mouths.
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She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen.
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The whole matter revolves around the self-respect of my people. How much satisfaction can I get from a court order for somebody toassociate with me who does not wish me near them?
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Taint no law on earth dat kin make a man be decent if it aint in 'im.
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Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.
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He looked like the love thoughts of women.
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When Janie looked out of her door she saw the drifting mists gathered in the west -- that cloud field of the sky -- to arm themselves with thunders and march forth against the world. Louder and higher and lower and wider the sound and motion spread, mounting, sinking, darking.
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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.
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Gods always behave like the people who make them.
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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.
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Zora Neale Hurston
- Born: January 7, 1891
- Died: January 28, 1960
- Occupation: Anthropologist
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