Zora Neale Hurston: Quotes and Life Lessons
By Emma Ward | On July 8, 2017 | Updated July 7, 2024 | Comments (2)
Zora Neale Hurston (1891 – 1960), the American novelist, essayist, anthropologist, and folklorist, was a well known figure in the Harlem Renaissance era. With much to say about life, love, and writing, we’ll explore some typically exuberant and wise Zora Neale Hurston quotes and life lessons.
In her fiction and nonfiction she spun out a plethora of inspiring, quotable text that belied the hardships she endured throughout the course of her career.
Her most influential work is Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), though most all of her other works have been revived after having been virtually forgotten.
An outspoken, outstanding figure in the Harlem Renaissance movement, Zora displayed great style, loved to laugh, and had great pride in the Black race.
Her work reflected her values, though beneath her joyous exterior, there was constant struggle, including three failed marriages and never enough money.
In the course of her lifetime, Zora’s reputation declined. Her books sold modestly and had many admirers, yet they also had their equal share of detractors. Some Black writers objected to her use of dialect. Other contemporaries were troubled by her political conservatism.
By the time she died in obscurity in 1960, she had been virtually forgotten. Fortunately, author Alice Walker played an instrumental role in reviving Hurston’s reputation. In 1973, she placed a marker at the spot where Zora was believed to be buried in an unmarked grave. The stone reads, “Zora Neale Hurston, A Genius of the South.”
Zora’s books are now read and studied far more even than they were during her lifetime, and have become staples of American literature and women’s studies courses.
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“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.” (from a 1943 letter to Countee Cullen)
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“Learning without wisdom is a load of books on a donkey’s back.”
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Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.” (Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937)
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“They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.” (Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937)
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“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” (Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937)
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“An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.” (Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937)
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“Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.” (Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937)
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“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.” (Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937)
5 Quotes from How it Feels to be Colored Me
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Dust Tracks on a Road (1942)
“Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘Jump at de sun.’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.” (Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942)
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“There is something about poverty that smells like death. Dead dreams dropping off the heart like leaves in a dry season rotting around the feet; impulses smothered too long in the fetid air of underground caves. The soul lives in a sickly air. People can be slave-ships in shoes.”
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“One of the most serious objections to me was that having nothing, I still did not know how to be humble. A child in my place ought to realize I was lucky to have a roof over my head and anything to eat at all.”
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“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein.”
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“I want a busy life, a just mind, and a timely death.”
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“I wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in Haiti. It was dammed up in me, I wrote it under internal pressure in seven weeks. I wish that I could write it again. In fact, I regret all of my books. It is one of the tragedies of life that one cannot have all the wisdom one is ever to possess in the beginning.”
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“… The force from somewhere in Space which commands you to write in the first place, gives you no choice. You take up the pen when you are told, and write what is commanded. There is no agony like a bearing and untold story inside you.”
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“Love, I find is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.”
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“The thing to do is grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.”
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“If you haven’t got it, you can’t show it. If you have got it, you can’t hide it.”
Other books and sources
“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.” (Jonah’s Gourd Vine, 1934)
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“I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads.” (“How it Feels to Be Colored Me,” 1928)
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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.” (“How it Feels to Be Colored Me,” 1928)
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“A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.” (Tell My Horse, 1938)
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“Gods always behave like the people who make them.” (Tell My Horse, 1938)
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“Once you wake up thought in a man, you can never put it to sleep again.” (Moses, Man of the Mountain, 1939)
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“I love myself when I am laughing. . . and then again when I am looking mean and impressive.” (I Love Myself When I am Laughing, a Zora Neale Hurston Reader, 1979)
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Zora Neale Hurston: Books, Publishing, and Publishers
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Long live the spirit of Zora Neale Hurston.🙏
Indeed, Mjelo, she was one of a kind!