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.
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.
Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.
Grown people know that they do not always know the way of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof.
Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.
There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor.
So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day.
Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it’s some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don’t know nothin’ but what we see.
He was the average mortal. It troubled him to get used to the world one way and then suddenly have it turn different.
If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.
For the first time she could see a man’s head naked of its skull. Saw the cunning thoughts race in and out through the caves and promontories of his mind long before they darted through the tunnel of his mouth.
Janie knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making.
It was hard to love a woman that always made you feel so wishful.
It troubled him to get used to the world one way and then suddenly have it turn different.
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.
No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep.
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.
No, I do not weep at the world. I’m too busy sharpening my oyster knife.
Now, women forget all the things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.
When one is too old for love, one finds great comfort in good dinners.
They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down.
The sun, the hero of every day, the impersonal old man that beams as brightly on death as on birth, came up every morning and raced across the blue dome and dipped into the sea of fire every evening.
An envious heart makes a treacherous ear. They done ‘heard’ bout you just what they hope done happened.
Lack of power and opportunity passes off too often for virtue.
So I do not pray. I accept the means at my disposal for working out my destiny. It seems to me that I have been given a mind and will power for that very purpose.
They sat on the boarding house porch and saw the sun plunge into the same crack in the earth from which the night emerged.
The one who makes the idols never worships them, however tenderly he might have molded the clay. You cannot have knowledge and worship at the same time. Mystery is the essence of divinity. Gods must keep their distances from men.
Pheoby’s hungry listening helped Janie to tell her story.
No, I do not weep at the world – I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.
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.
Husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what marriage meant. It was just so. Janie felt glad of the thought, for then it wouldn’t seem so destructive and mouldy. She wouldn’t be lonely anymore.
Nanny’s words made Janie’s kiss across the gatepost seem like a manure pile after a rain
Tain’t no use in you cryin’ . . . But folks is meant to cry ’bout somethin’ or other. Better leave things de way dey is. Youse young yet. No tellin’ whut mout happen befo’ you die.
Let the sun go down on you like King Harold at the battle of Hastings — fighting gloriously. Maybe a loser but what a loser! Greater in defeat than the conqueror. Certainly not a coward that rusted out lurking in his tent.
All of the people took it up and sung it over and over until it was wrung dry, and no further innovations of tone and tempo were conceivable. Then they hushed and ate barbecue.
A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.
I have been in sorrow’s kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows with a harp and sword in my hands.
It seems to me that trying to live without friends is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble and then not worth much after you get it.
Love I find is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.
I want a busy life a just mind and a timely death.
Once you wake up thought in a man you can never put it to sleep again.
There is nothing to make you like other human beings so much as doing things for them.
Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.
Women forget all the things they don’t want to remember and remember everything they don’t want to forget.
They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty. A mood come alive. Words walking without master…
It is one of the blessings of this world that few people see visions and dream dreams.
Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.
The man who interprets Nature is always held in great honor.
It seems to me that trying to live without friends is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble, and then not worth much after you get it.
Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.
So the brother in black offers to these United States the source of courage that endures, and laughter.
Trees and plants always look like the people they live with, somehow.
It’s a funny thing, the less people have to live for, the less nerve they have to risk losing nothing.
The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.