Emily > Emily's Quotes

“An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That's living.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“Love is like the sea. It's a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it's different with every shore.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Bitterness is the coward's revenge on the world for having been hurt.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Those that don't got it, can't show it. Those that got it, can't hide it.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“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

“I made up my mind to keep my feelings to myself since they did not seem to matter to anyone else but me.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“He says, you have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else but you can’t make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.”
― Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes

“Love her as in childhood
Through feeble, old and grey.
For you’ll never miss a mother’s love
Till she’s buried beneath the clay.”
― Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes

“A mother's love is a blessing
No matter where you roam.
Keep her while you have her,
You'll miss her when she's gone.”
― Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes

“Stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it.”
― Frank McCourt

“You have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it. If you won the Irish Sweepstakes and bought a house that needed furniture would you fill it with bits and pieces of rubbish? Your mind is your house and if you fill it with rubbish from the cinemas, it will rot in your head. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.”
― Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes

“The Seven Social Sins are:

Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.


From a sermon given by Frederick Lewis Donaldson in Westminster Abbey, London, on March 20, 1925.”
― Frederick Lewis Donaldson

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
― Isaac Asimov

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

“Every race and every nation should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“The Awakening

I dreamed that I was a rose
That grew beside a lonely way,
Close by a path none ever chose,
And there I lingered day by day.
Beneath the sunshine and the show’r
I grew and waited there apart,
Gathering perfume hour by hour,
And storing it within my heart,
Yet, never knew,
Just why I waited there and grew.

I dreamed that you were a bee
That one day gaily flew along,
You came across the hedge to me,
And sang a soft, love-burdened song.
You brushed my petals with a kiss,
I woke to gladness with a start,
And yielded up to you in bliss
The treasured fragrance of my heart;
And then I knew
That I had waited there for you.”
― James Weldon Johnson, Complete Poems

“Listen!--- Listen!
All you sons of Pharaoh.
Who do you think can hold God's people
when the Lord God himself has said,
Let my people go?”
― James Weldon Johnson, God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse

“Lift every voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast’ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered.
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might,
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.”
― James Weldon Johnson, Saint Peter Relates an Incident: Selected Poems

“Oh, God, to know you is life. To serve You is freedom. To praise you is the soul's joy and delight. Guard me with the power of Your grace here and in all places. Now and at all times, forever. Amen.”
― St. Augustine of Hippo

“Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.”
― St. Augustine

“There can only be two basic loves... the love of God unto the forgetfulness of self, or the love of self unto the forgetfulness and denial of God.”
― St. Augustine

“I was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost. Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them.”
― St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“Humility must accompany all our actions, must be with us everywhere; for as soon as we glory in our good works they are of no further value to our advancement in virtue. ”
― St. Augustine of Hippo

“He who denies the existence of God, has some reason for wishing that God did not exist.”
― St. Augustine