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.
BETTY SMITHI tried my best to kill that man in the hallway. Then one sunny day, they walk out in all innocence and they walk right into the grief that you’d give your life to spare them from.
More Betty Smith Quotes
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Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound but you couldn’t fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer.
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Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.
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Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.
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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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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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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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Every day you must read one page from some good book to your child. Every day this must be until the child learns to read. Then she must read every day, I know this is the secret
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A child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things.
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Let me be hungry…have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere – be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar.
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She must start out believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination.
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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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People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,” thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get.
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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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Suffering is also good, it makes a person rich in charachter.
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Oh time…time, pass so that I forget! Oh time, Great Healer, pass over me and let me forget.
BETTY SMITH