…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“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.
More Betty Smith Quotes
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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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Well’ Francie decided, ‘I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life – and nothing else but’.
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We’ll leave now, so that this moment will remain a perfect memory…let it be our song and think of me every time you hear it.
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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?
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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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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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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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I’ll not punish you for having an imagination.
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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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Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains – a cup of strong hot coffee when you’re blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you’re alone – just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.
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Look at everything as though you are seeing it for the first time.
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Books became her friends, and there was one for every mood.
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Occasionally there is a moment in a person’s life when he takes a great stride forward in wisdom, humility, or disillusionment.
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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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Of course, I didn’t ask to be born Catholic, no more than I asked to be born American. But I’m glad it turned out that I’m both these things.
BETTY SMITH