Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber as a word was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg Brooklyn.
BETTY SMITHAs 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.
More Betty Smith Quotes
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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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From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.
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It is a good thing to learn the truth one’s self. To first believe with all your heart, and then not to believe, is good too. It fattens the emotions and makes them to stretch.
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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.
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Suffering is also good, it makes a person rich in charachter.
BETTY SMITH -
I never listen to what people tell me and I can’t read. The only way I know what is right and wrong is the way I feel about things. If I feel bad, it’s wrong. If I feel good, it’s right.
BETTY SMITH -
Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.
BETTY SMITH -
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.
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Having risen above his environment, he can forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the cruel upclimb.
BETTY SMITH -
There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky.
BETTY SMITH -
People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,” thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get.
BETTY SMITH -
…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.
BETTY SMITH -
What was important was that the attempt to write stories kept her straight on the dividing line between truth and fiction. If she had not found this outlet in writing, she might have grown up to be a tremendous liar.
BETTY SMITH -
Occasionally there is a moment in a person’s life when he takes a great stride forward in wisdom, humility, or disillusionment.
BETTY SMITH -
Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.
BETTY SMITH







