Zora Neale Hurston Quotes

The truth is a trap: you can not get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.

Reason is like an officer when the King appears;
The officer then loses his power and hides himself.
Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun.

First he appeared in the class of inorganic things,
Next he passed therefrom into that of plants,
For years he lived as one of the plants,
Remembering naught of his inorganic state so different,
And when he passed from the vegetive to the animal state
He had no remembrance of his state as a plant.

Every day, every year, and for every graduating class, there is a choice to be made, the same option for all grown-ups to make: to be one of three types of Americans — those who embrace liberty for all, those who won’t, or those who are indifferent — and only the first do the work of creating a more perfect union.

This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace to extract the silver from the dross. This testing purifies the gold by boiling the scum away.

I can't love you in the dark,
It feels like we're oceans apart.
There is so much space between us,
Baby, we're already defeated.
Ah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah, everything changed me.

?It’ pretty hard for the Lord to guide you if you haven’t made up your mind which way to go.”

They were walking side by side, but each was alone.

Criticism alone can sever the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which can be injurious universally; as well as of idealism and skepticism, which are dangerous chiefly to the Schools, and hardly allow of being handed on to the public.

By the way, what have you done that's so great? Do you create anything, or just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?

I encouraged the leadership in its time of weakness. Now that they are strong, I'm allowed not to applaud. If a Palestinian state is established, I will be in the opposition. That's my natural place.

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

By simple common sense I don't believe in God, in none.

We must not contradict, but instruct him that contradicts us; for a madman is not cured by another running mad also.

Things That Lose by Being Painted
Pinks, cherry blossoms, yellow roses. Men or women who are praised in romances as being beautiful.Things That Gain by Being Painted
Pines. Autumn fields. Mountain villages and paths. Cranes and deer. A very cold winter scene; an unspeakably hot summer scene. (p. 138)

If Shakespeare required a word and had not met it in civilized discourse, he unhesitatingly made it up.