Zora Neale Hurston Quotes

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed Against the earth's sweet flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in summer wear A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.

No need to fix what God already put his paint brush on

God makes trees, he doesn't write books.

A tree is a nobler object than a prince in his coronation-robes.

The word of God tends to make large-minded noble-minded men.

For me, the world of nature bears spectacular witness to the imaginative genius of our Creator.

So every day So every day I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you.

To sing is to praise God and the daffodils, and to praise God is to thank Him, in every note within my small range, and every color in the tones of my voice, with every look into the eyes of my audience, to thank Him. Thank you, God, for letting me be born, for giving me eyes to see the daffodils lean in the wind, all my brothers, all my sisters, for giving me ears to hear crying, legs to come running, hands to smooth damp hair, a voice to laugh with and to sing with...to sing to you and the daffodils.

The elms of New England! They are as much a part of her beauty as the columns of the Parthenon were the glory of its architecture.

There once was a child, and he strolled about a good deal, and thought of a number of things. He had a sister, who was a child too, and his constant companion. These two used to wonder all day long. They wondered at the beauty of the flowers; they wondered at the height and blueness of the sky; they wondered at the depth of the bright water; they wondered at the goodness and the power of God who made the lovely world.

We are God's productions, His compositions.

Conservatives are people who look at a tree and feel instinctively that it is more beautiful than anything they can name. But when it comes to defending that tree against a highway, they will go for the highway.

I’m interested in natural growth patterns, and the beautiful forms that only nature creates. How that flows through me and how that comes out is what I’m trying to understand.

When I was a kid, my mom once told me that God was an artist and how on occasion He’d throw a bucketful of paint across the sky for us all to see. I asked her why the paint disappeared by morning, and she told me that if the sky was always like that we might take it for granted. I suppose she was right. Maybe that’s what war is all about—so we can appreciate times of peace.

The value of the things is not in themselves autonomously, but that God made them, and thus they deserve to be treated with high respect. The tree in the field is to be treated with respect. It is not to be romanticized as the old lady romanticizes her cat (that is, she reads human reactions into it). This is wrong because it is not true. When you drive the axe into the tree when you need firewood, you are not cutting down a person; you are cutting down a tree. But while we should not romanticize the tree, we must realize God made it and it deserves respect because He made is as a tree.

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth's sweet flowing breast.

When you can see the beauty of a tree, then you will know what love is.

What if you have seen it before, ten thousand times over? An apple tree in full blossom is like a message, sent fresh from heaven to earth, of purity and beauty.

The poetry of art is in beholding the single tower; the poetry of nature in seeing the single tree; the poetry of love in following the single woman; the poetry of religion in worshipping the single star.

Beautiful as a dandelion-blossom, golden in the green grass, This life can be. Common as a dandelion-blossom, beautiful in the clean grass, not beautiful Because common, beautiful because beautiful, Noble because common, because free.

O world, as God has made it! All is beauty.