Francie looked at her legs. They were long, slender, and exquisitely molded. She wore the sheerest of flawless silk stockings, and expensively made high-heeled pumps shod her beautifully arched feet.
BETTY SMITHSometimes I think it’s better to suffer bitter unhappiness and to fight and to scream out, and even to suffer that terrible pain, than to just be… safe. At least she knows she’s living.
More Betty Smith Quotes
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Suffering is also good, it makes a person rich in charachter.
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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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Look at everything as though you are seeing it for the first time.
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We’ll leave now, so that this moment will remain a perfect memory…let it be our song and think of me every time you hear it.
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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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But the penciled sheets did not seem like nor smell like the library book so she had given it up, consoling herself with the vow that when she grew up, she would work hard, save money and buy every single book that she liked.
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A child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things.
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In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.
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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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Bad quarrels come when two people are wrong. Worse quarrels come when two people are right.
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The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child’s life.
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What must I do, mother, what must I do to make a different world for her? How do I start?” “The secret lies in the reading and the writing. You are able to read.
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Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!
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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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The world was hers for the reading.
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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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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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Well, there’s a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.
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She was surprised at how tiny it seemed now. She supposed the school was just as big as it had ever been only her eyes had grown used to looking at bigger things.
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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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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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Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.
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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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People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,” thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get.
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She liked the combined smell of worn leather bindings, library past and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked the smell of burning incense at high mass.
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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