"Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships."
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Zora Neale Hurston quotes (page 2 of 11)
215 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me."
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"Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the grand-daughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me. Slaver y is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you. The terrible struggle that made me an American out of a potential slave said "On the line!" The Reconstruction said "Go!" I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep."
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"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."
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"Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at the sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground."
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"It was a weak spot in any nation to have a large body of disaffected people within its confusion."
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"I love myself when I am laughing."
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"A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it."
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"Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and sweat, cry and sweat, pray and sweat!"
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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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"You got to go there to know there."
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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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"So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day."
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"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 sword in my hands."
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"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."
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"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. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see."
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"Learning without wisdom is a load of books on a donkey's back."
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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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"truth is a letter from courage!"
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"Now, suppose a Negro does something really magnificent, and I glory, not in the benefit to mankind, but in the fact that the doer was a Negro. Must I not also go hang my head in shame when a member of my race does something execrable? . . . The white race did not go into a laboratory and invent incandescent light. That was Edison. . . . If you are under the impression that every white man is an Edison, just look around a bit."
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