66 Remarkable Zora Neale Hurston Quotes That Inspired The World

Zora Neale Hurston was born in Alabama in 1891 and later become one of the most influential black writers in North American history. She was very involved with the African American rights movements and through her creative use of words, she was able to relay the racial struggles she experienced.

Now, despite becoming a familiar name through the 40’s and 50’s, she died in poverty in 1960 without the credit she deserved. Fortunately, she did receive posthumous recognition of her accomplishments.

As a mark of respect to a truly inspirational individual, you’ll find here her quotes to empower yourself to live an authentic life.

1. Those that don’t got it, can’t show it. Those that got it, can’t hide it.

Zora Neale Hurston

2. I did not just fall in love. I made a parachute jump.

Zora Neale Hurston

3. 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

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

Zora Neale Hurston

5. A woman robbed of her love is more terrible than an army with banners.

Zora Neale Hurston

6. I want a busy life, a just mind, and a timely death.

Zora Neale Hurston

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

Zora Neale Hurston

8. 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

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

Zora Neale Hurston

10. I will fight for my country, but I will not lie for her.

Zora Neale Hurston

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

Zora Neale Hurston

12. I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads.

Zora Neale Hurston

13. Bitterness is the coward’s revenge on the world for having been hurt.

Zora Neale Hurston

14. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.

Zora Neale Hurston

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

Zora Neale Hurston

16. Such as I am, I am a precious gift.

Zora Neale Hurston

17. If writers were too wise, perhaps no books would get written at all. It might be better to ask yourself ‘Why?’ afterward than before … There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.

Zora Neale Hurston

18. Life, inexhaustible, goes on. And we do too. Carrying our wounds and our medicines as we go.

Zora Neale Hurston

19. 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

20. I love myself when I am laughing. . . and then again when I am looking mean and impressive.

Zora Neale Hurston

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

Zora Neale Hurston

22. Life is the flower for which love is the honey.

Zora Neale Hurston

23. 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

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

Zora Neale Hurston

25. 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

26. 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

27. 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

28. Learning without wisdom is a load of books on a donkey’s back.

Zora Neale Hurston

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

Zora Neale Hurston

30. Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and sweat, cry and sweat, pray and sweat!

Zora Neale Hurston

31. 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.

Zora Neale Hurston

32. Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and sweat, cry and sweat, pray and sweat!

Zora Neale Hurston

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

Zora Neale Hurston

34. 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

35. Happiness is nothing but everyday living seen through a veil.

Zora Neale Hurston

36. It is easy to be hopeful in the day when you can see the things you wish on.

Zora Neale Hurston

37. Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.

Zora Neale Hurston

38. 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

39. If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other folks then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding.

Zora Neale Hurston

40. The man who interprets Nature is always held in great honor.

Zora Neale Hurston

41. Common danger made common friends.

Zora Neale Hurston

42. It seems to me that trying to live without friends is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble, and then not worth much after you get it.

Zora Neale Hurston

43. There is something about poverty that smells like death.

Zora Neale Hurston

44. Silence is all the genius a fool has.

Zora Neale Hurston

45. Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person.

Zora Neale Hurston

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

Zora Neale Hurston

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

Zora Neale Hurston

48. You got to go there to know there.

Zora Neale Hurston

49. It was not death she feared. It was a misunderstanding.

Zora Neale Hurston

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

Zora Neale Hurston

51. There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man’s spice-box seasons his own food.

Zora Neale Hurston

52. But any man who walks in the way of power and property is bound to meet hate

Zora Neale Hurston

53. No man may make another free.

Zora Neale Hurston

54. 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

55. I do not weep at the world I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

Zora Neale Hurston

56. Anytime you catch folks lying, they scared of something!

Zora Neale Hurston

57. Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.

Zora Neale Hurston

58. No matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you.

Zora Neale Hurston

59. My eyes and my mind keep taking me where my old legs can’t keep up.

Zora Neale Hurston

60. An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.

Zora Neale Hurston

61. Distance is the only cure for certain diseases.

Zora Neale Hurston

62. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.

Zora Neale Hurston

63. She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her.

Zora Neale Hurston

64. It seems that tears and laughter, love and hate, make up the sum of life!

Zora Neale Hurston

65. She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen.

Zora Neale Hurston

66. Work is the nearest thing to happiness that I can find.

Zora Neale Hurston