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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 Smith

This could be a whole life,” she thought. “You work eight hours a day covering wires to earn money to buy food and to pay for a place to sleep so that you can keep living to come back to cover more wires. Some people are born and kept living just to come to this.
BETTY SMITH

Eight People Sleep
If you love someone, you’d rather suffer the pain alone to spare them.
BETTY SMITH

Pain Someone Suffering
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.
BETTY SMITH

Men Tree Trying
Occasionally there is a moment in a person’s life when he takes a great stride forward in wisdom, humility, or disillusionment.
BETTY SMITH

Humility Understanding Wisdom
The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child’s life.
BETTY SMITH

Children Cities Important
I’ll not punish you for having an imagination.
BETTY SMITH

Imagination Person Punish
Dear God,’ she prayed, ‘let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.’
BETTY SMITH

Beautiful Brooklyn Dear God
She 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.
BETTY SMITH

Brother Father Flower
Did you ever see so many pee-wee hats, Carl?” “They’re beanies.” “They call them pee-wees in Brooklyn.” “But I’m not in Brooklyn.” “But you’re still a Brooklynite.”
BETTY SMITH

Beatles Country Ever People Things
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

Knowing Mind People
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 SMITH

Beautiful Feet Long
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

Fullness Life Love Struggle
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.
BETTY SMITH

Children Country Invisible Legends Mother Steel
She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie’s secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father stumbling home drunk. She was all of these things and of something more…
BETTY SMITH

Bitter Dearly Despairing God Loved Quarries Stumbling Weeping
Some people do crossword puzzles. I do books.
BETTY SMITH

Book Crosswords People
It was the last time she’d see the river from that window. The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself. This that I see now, she thought, to see no more this way.
BETTY SMITH

Grieving Light Poignancy Rivers

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.

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Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Betty Smith Quotes