Francie was ten years old when she first found an outlet in writing. What she wrote was of little consequence.
BETTY SMITHAnd 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.
More Betty Smith Quotes
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Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.
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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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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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If there was only one tree like that in the world, you would think it was beautiful. But because there are so many, you just can’t see how beautiful it really is.
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Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!
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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 -
I’ll not punish you for having an imagination.
BETTY SMITH -
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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I can never give a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ I don’t believe everything in life can be settled by a monosyllable.
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Books became her friends, and there was one for every mood.
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But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.
BETTY SMITH -
Francie looked at her legs. They were long, slender, and exquisitely molded. She wore the sheerest of flawless silk stockings, and expensively made high-heeled pumps shod her beautifully arched feet.
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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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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.
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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