Zora Neale Hurston is often called the queen of the Harlem Renaissance. She wore many hats from novelist, folklorist, filmmaker and more. Her most famous book is “Their Eyes Were Watching God”. She was a trailblazer icon for black women who were seeking education and reform at the time. While she gained fame posthumously, her books are an important part of black culture and are reflective of the time. She has written over 25 novels and multiple short stories and research papers.
Here are some of the most inspiring Zora Neale quotes.
46 Amazing Quotes by Zora Neale
Zora Neale Quotes on Love
#1. “Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Biography
#2. “Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
#3. “It seems that tears and laughter, love and hate, make up the sum of life.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings
#4. “Love, I find is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Biography
#5. “I did not just fall in love; I made a parachute jump.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Biography
#6. “Don’t you love nobody better’n you do yo’self. Do, you’ll be dying befo’ yo’ time is out.” – Zora Neale Hurston
#7. “When one is too old for love, one finds great comfort in good dinners.” – Zora Neale Hurston
#8. “Distance is the only cure for certain diseases.” – Zora Neale Hurston
#9. “I have a strong suspicion. that much that passes for constant love is a golded-up moment walking in its sleep.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
#10. “Perhaps love is a compelling necessity imposed on man by God that has something to do with suffering.” – Zora Neale Hurston, The Complete Stories
Zora Neale Quotes About the Person You Love
#11. “I would like just a little of her sunshine to soak into my soul. I would like that a lot. You saw a fluttering fan before her face and magnolia blooms and sleepy lakes under the moonlight when she walked.” – Zora Neale Hurston
#12. “I wish I could buy you for what you are really worth and sell you for what you think you’re worth. I sure would make money on the deal.” – Zora Neale Hurston
#13. “He looked like the love thoughts of women.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
#14. “God took pattern after a pine tree and built you noble.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Spunk: Three Tales
#15. “Please God, please suh, don’t let him love nobody else but me. Maybe Ah’m is uh fool, Lawd, lak dey say, but Lawd, Ah been so lonesome, and Ah been waitin’, Jesus. Ah done waited uh long time.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
#16. “Tea Cake, the son of the Evening Sun, had to die for loving her.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Quotes About God and Religion
#17. “All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise, they would not be worshipped… Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
#18. “When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
#19. “They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
#20. “I will fight for my country, but I will not lie for her.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road
#21. “Light came to me when I realized that I did not have to consider any racial group as a whole.” – Zora Neale Hurston
#22. “God made them duck by duck and that was the only way I could see them.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road
#23. “Gods always behave like the people who make them.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica
#24. “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.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
#25. “Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person.” – Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Quotes About Inspiration and Advice
#26. “Lack of power and opportunity passes off too often for virtue.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road
#27. “It seems that fighting is a game where everybody is the loser.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
#28. “There is nothing to make you like other human beings so much as doing things for them.” – Zora Neale Hurston
#29. “Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and sweat, cry and sweat, pray and sweat.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Sweat
#30. “Happiness is nothing but everyday living seen through a veil.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
#31. “We must learn to be honest with ourselves, and know our shortcomings. We will acquire cohesion but we will pay dearly for being a slow pupil.” – Zora Neale Hurston
#32. “Anytime you catch folks lying, they scared of something.” – Zora Neale Hurston
#33. “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
#34. “I do not weep at the world I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road
#35. “It seems like the first law of Nature is that everybody likes to receive things, but nobody likes to feel grateful.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Moses: Man of the Mountain
#36. “No man may make another free.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Moses: Man of the Mountain
#37. “Slogans can be worse than swords if they are only put in the right mouths.” – Zora Neale Hurston
#38. “It’s a funny thing, the less people have to live for, the less nerve they have to risk losing nothing.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Biography
Zora Neale Quotes About Self-Motivation
#39. “Such as I am, I am a precious gift.” – Zora Neale Hurston
#40. “I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads.” – Zora Neale Hurston, How It Feels to Be Colored Me
#41. “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
#42. “You’se something tuh make uh man forgit to git old and forgit tuh die.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
#43. “And I can’t die easy thinking maybe the menfolks white or black is making a spit cup out of you. Have some sympathy for me. Put me down easy, Janie, I’m a cracked plate.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
#44. “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, How It Feels to Be Colored Me
#45. “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.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Wrapped in Rainbows
#46. “You can’t beat me and my prayers.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings
Zora Neale was an amazing author who didn’t see the stars of fame till her passing. She wrote of her own experiences and of those around her. Such is the powerful force of her writing that one can feel the heat of her emotions behind her words. Some of her most famous quotes arise from her famed novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”
Image source: Zora Neale photo by Jone Johnson Lewis
