Betty Smith Short Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

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You won't die, Francie. You were born to lick this rotten life.

Betty Smith
Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!

Betty Smith
Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife?

Betty Smith
There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky.

Betty Smith
They learned no compassion from their own anguish. thus their suffering was wasted.

Betty Smith
A child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things.

Betty Smith
'Dear God,' she prayed, 'let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.'

Betty Smith
All of us are what we have to be and everyone lives the kind of life its in him to live.

Betty Smith
Well, there's a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.

Betty Smith
No. I don't want to need anybody. I want someone to need me... I want someone to need me.

Betty Smith
Bad quarrels come when two people are wrong. Worse quarrels come when two people are right.

Betty Smith
In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.

Betty Smith
Well' Francie decided, 'I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life - and nothing else but'.

Betty Smith
It's come at last", she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.

Betty Smith
But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.

Betty Smith
She really did understand. Unfortunately, understanding doesn't always connote sanction, conversion, or forgiveness.

Betty Smith
She had had the pain; it had been like being boiled alive in scalding oil and not being able to die to get free of it

Betty Smith
The difference between rich and poor... is that the poor do everything with their own hands and the rich hire hands to do things.

Betty Smith
New York! I've always wanted to see it and now I've see it. It's true what they say— it's the most wonderful city in the world.

Betty Smith
Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.

Betty Smith
I want to live for something. I don't want to live to get charity food to give me enough strength to go back to get more charity food.

Betty Smith
She had become accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and to being considered 'different.' She did not suffer too much.

Betty Smith
'It's only for now,' we say when we're young. And one fine day we wake up and find out that what's only for now is the whole Goddamned thing!

Betty Smith
It doesn't take long to write things of which you know nothing. When you write of actual things, it takes longer, because you have to live them first.

Betty Smith
People looking up at her—at her smooth pretty vivacious face—had no way of knowing about the painfully articulated resolves formulating in her mind.

Betty Smith
The library was a little old shabby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church.

Betty Smith
There's a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky.

Betty Smith
If there was only one tree like that in the world, you would think it was beautiful. But because there are so many, you just can't see how beautiful it really is.

Betty Smith
It meant that she belonged some place. She was a Brooklyn girl with a Brooklyn name and a Brooklyn accent. She didn't want to change into a bit of this and a bit of that.

Betty Smith
She told Papa about it. He made her stick out her tongue and he felt her wrist. He shook his head sadly and said, "You have a bad case, a very bad case." "Of what?" "Growing up.

Betty Smith