I hate all those flirty-birty games that women make up. Life’s too short. If you ever find a man you love, don’t waste time hanging your head and simpering. Go right up to him and say, ‘I love you. How about getting married?
BETTY SMITHShe was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard.
More Betty Smith Quotes
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From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood.
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Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!
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Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains – a cup of strong hot coffee when you’re blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you’re alone – just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.
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But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.
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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.
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It was a good thing that she got herself into this other school. It showed her that there were other worlds beside the world she had been born into and that these other worlds were not unattainable.
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The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child’s life.
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Some people do crossword puzzles. I do books.
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But this tree in the yard-this tree that men chopped down…this tree that they built a bonfire around, trying to burn up it’s stump-this tree lived! It lived! And nothing could destroy it.
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She had heard Papa sing so many songs about the heart; the heart that was breaking – was aching – was dancing -was heavy laden – that leaped for joy – that was heavy in sorrow – that turned over – that stood still. She really believed the heart actually did those things.
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I get a heavy penance for something I couldn’t help doing. But good or bad, I am a Catholic and I’ll never be anything else.
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The difference between rich and poor”, said Francie, “is that the poor do everything with thier own hands and the rich hire hands to do things.
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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.
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People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,” thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get.
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They learned no compassion from their own anguish. thus their suffering was wasted.
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She went out and took a last long look at the shabby little library. She knew she would never see it again.
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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.
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Everything, decided Francie after that first lecture, was vibrant with life and there was no death in chemistry. She was puzzled as to why learned people didn’t adopt chemistry as a religion.
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It’s come at last,” she thought, “the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache. When there wasn’t enough food in the house you pretended that you weren’t hungry so they could have more.
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In the cold of a winter’s night you got up and put your blanket on their bed so they wouldn’t be cold. You’d kill anyone who tried to harm the.
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Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife?
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Dear God,’ she prayed, ‘let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.’
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There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky.
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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
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From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.
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I came to a clear conclusion, and it is a universal one: To live, to struggle, to be in love with life–in love with all life holds, joyful or sorrowful–is fulfillment. The fullness of life is open to all of us.
BETTY SMITH