Zora Neale Hurston Quotes

Where no hope is left, is left no fear.

Many of the young people living in inner-city America don't see themselves - I mean, they even talk about things like death and dying. And there's a tremendous loss of hope. And of all the things to lose, I think nothing is worse or more difficult to overcome than the loss of hope.

I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.

We were poor, my mother and I, living in a world of doom and gloom, pessimism and bitterness, where storms raged and wolves scratched at the door.

I know I'm going to blow one day. My life is doomed the way it is. I have no future.

I'd like to do things to make money to save myself but right now I can't do nothing. If they want to put me in jail, they can do that. It's kind of tough.

If it's just the same with you, Mr. President, I'd like to lie down and die.

People's fear doth ofttimes degenerate into desperation

…the more miserable a man is, the more he dreads every sort of change, lest it make him more wretched still.

Not having a roof over your head at night must be frightening, cold, lonely and depressing. To be seriously ill as well must be beyond upsetting.

The nice thing about true hopelessness is that you don't have to try again.

Come on in girls, and leave all hope behind.

Farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear

For death is not the worst, but when one wants to die and is not able even to have that.

I know I am at the end. I shall never get better, dear.

I want to tell you what it was really like to think death is imminent, but I can't. It's a taste in your mouth. And an emptiness.

If beggars do not hate the rest of us, they are even more abject than I had imagined.

People don't believe or understand that a community can lose hope. You can have a whole community where hopelessness is the norm, where folks don't have faith that things will get better because history and circumstances have proven over 30, 40, or 50 years that things don't get better.

I turn and turn in my cell like a fly that doesn't know where to die.

All hope abandon, ye who enter here!

My sweetest hope is to lose hope.

Uncertainty! fell demon of our fears! The human soul that can support despair, supports not thee.

One-third of our people were dangerously ill, getting worse hourly, and we felt sure of meeting the same fate, with death as our only prospect, which in such a country was much worse yet.

Dread, which is closely related to fear, steals the ability to enjoy ordinary life and makes people anxious about the future. It keeps them from looking forward to the next day, the next month, or the next decade.

It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.