But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.
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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Mother, I am young. Mother, I am just eighteen. I am strong. I will work hard, Mother. But I do not want this child to grow up just to work hard.
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She told Papa about it. He made her stick out her tongue and he felt her wrist. He shook his head sadly and said, “You have a bad case, a very bad case.” “Of what?” “Growing up.
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“I wouldn’t want that to get around, Annie.” “You don’t mean that, Carl.” “Ah, we might as well call them beanies, Annie.” “Why?” “When in Rome do as the Romans do.” “Do they call them beanies in Rome?” she asked artlessly. “This is the silliest conversation.
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Sometimes 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.
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Intolerance is a thing that causes war, pogroms, crucifixions, lynchings, and makes people cruel to little children and each other. It is responsible for most of the viciousness, violence, terror, and heart and soul breaking of the world.
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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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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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Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife?
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And that’s where the whole trouble is. We’re too much alike to understand each other because we don’t even understand our own selves.
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Eyes changed after they looked at new things. If in the years to be she were to come back, her new eyes might make everything seem different from the way she saw it now. The way it was now was the way she wanted to remember it.
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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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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.
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Oh time…time, pass so that I forget! Oh time, Great Healer, pass over me and let me forget.
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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.
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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 SMITH