It’s a beautiful religion and I wish I understood it more. No, I don’t want to understand it all. It’s beautiful because it’s always a mystery.
BETTY SMITHOccasionally there is a moment in a person’s life when he takes a great stride forward in wisdom, humility, or disillusionment.
More Betty Smith Quotes
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Dear God,” she prayed, “let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm.
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…the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only – the something different from anyone else in the two families.
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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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Of course, I didn’t ask to be born Catholic, no more than I asked to be born American. But I’m glad it turned out that I’m both these things.
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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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And you must tell the child the legends I told you – as my mother told them to me and her mother to her. You must tell the fairy tales of the old country. You must tell of those not of the earth who live forever in the hearts of the people.
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Well, there’s a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.
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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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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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As she read, at peace with the world and happy as only a little girl could be with a fine book and a little bowl of candy, and all alone in the house, the leaf shadows shifted and the afternoon passed.
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I know that’s what people say– you’ll get over it. I’d say it, too. But I know it’s not true. Oh, youll be happy again, never fear. But you won’t forget. Every time you fall in love it will be because something in the man reminds you of him.
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Yes, when I get big and have my own home, no plush chairs and lace curtains for me. And no rubber plants.
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Brooklyn was a dream. All the things that happened there just couldn’t happen. It was all dream stuff. Or was it all real and true and was it that she, Francie, was the dreamer?
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A lie was something you told because you were mean or a coward. A story was something you made up out of something that might have happened. Only you didn’t tell it like it was, you told it like you thought it should have been.
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If you love someone, you’d rather suffer the pain alone to spare them.
BETTY SMITH