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Because the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe.

Betty Smith

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.
BETTY SMITH

Firsts Lecture People
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

Feel Good People Way
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.
BETTY SMITH

Children Disappointment Teaching
As long as one can suffer, one is living….live and suffer until life is gone.
BETTY SMITH

Gone Long 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
There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky.
BETTY SMITH

Bad People Person Unlucky
Look at everything as though you are seeing it for the first time.
BETTY SMITH

Firsts Looks Perspective
The library was a little old shaby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in.
BETTY SMITH

Beautiful Doors Library Past Place
…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

Living Observing Reading Something Soul Two
It was a good thing that she got herself into this other school. It showed her that there were other worlds beside the world she had been born into and that these other worlds were not unattainable.
BETTY SMITH

Other School Unattainable Worlds
I want to live for something. I don’t want to live to get charity food to give me enough strength to go back to get more charity food.
BETTY SMITH

Charity Giving Strength Want
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.
BETTY SMITH

Grow Up Papa Tongue
Books became her friends, and there was one for every mood.
BETTY SMITH

Book Intimate Friends Mood
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
And always, there was the magic of learning things.
BETTY SMITH

Always Learning Magic Things
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.
BETTY SMITH

Children Heart Intolerance War
No. I don’t want to need anybody. I want someone to need me … I want someone to need me.
BETTY SMITH

Anybody Needs Someone Want
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
“Beautiful legs, then, is the secret of being a mistriss,” concluded Francie. She looked down at her own long thin legs. “I’ll never make it, I guess.” Sighing , she resigned herself to a sinless life.
BETTY SMITH

Beautiful Herself Legs Looked Resigned
As 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.
BETTY SMITH

Book Candy Girl House Shadow
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

Firsts Long Nothing Writing
Because the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe.
BETTY SMITH

Believe Children Imagination
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.
BETTY SMITH

Eyes School Tiny
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.
BETTY SMITH

Book Hard Smell Work
Oh, the last time how clearly you see everything; as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn’t held it tighter when you had it every day.
BETTY SMITH

Clearly Everything Tighter Turned
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.
BETTY SMITH

Much Self Too Trouble
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.
BETTY SMITH

Believing Start Starting Ugly World

Because the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe.

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Because the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Betty Smith Quotes