X

Sort by

Quote length

Sentiment

Change font

Change background

Betty Smith Inspirational Quotes (53)

Page 1 of 3
Filter & Style
Image
Some people do crossword puzzles. I do books.
Betty Smith
Image
Occasionally there is a moment in a person's life when he takes a great stride forward in wisdom, humility, or disillusionment. For a split second he comes into a kind of cosmic understanding. For a trembling breath of time he knows all there is to know. He is loaned the gift the poet yearned for - seeing himself as others see him.
Betty Smith
Image
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
Image
There had to be dark and muddy waters so that the sun could have something to background it's flashing glory.
Betty Smith
Image
How much do they be paying you? he asked mellowly. The usual salary. A little more than they think I'm worth and a little less than I think I'm worth.
Betty Smith
Image
Bad quarrels come when two people are wrong. Worse quarrels come when two people are right.
Betty Smith
Image
I wrote about people who liked fake fireplaces in their parlor, who thought a brass horse with a clock embedded in its flank was wonderful.
Betty Smith
Image
Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!
Betty Smith
Image
This could be a whole life, she thought. You work eight hours a day covering wires to earn money to buy food and to pay for a place to sleep so that you can keep living to come back to cover more wires. Some people are born and kept living just to come to this.
Betty Smith
Image
Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife?
Betty Smith
Image
From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood.
Betty Smith
Image
All my life I've been lonely. I've been lonely at crowded parties. I've been lonely in the middle of kissing a girl and I've been lonely at camp with hundreds of fellows around. But now I'm not lonely any more.
Betty Smith
Image
It meant that she belonged some place. She was a Brooklyn girl with a Brooklyn name and a Brooklyn accent. She didn't want to change into a bit of this and a bit of that.
Betty Smith
Image
Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.
Betty Smith
Image
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
Image
I came to a clear conclusion, and it is a universal one: To live, to struggle, to be in love with life--in love with all life holds, joyful or sorrowful--is fulfillment. The fullness of life is open to all of us.
Betty Smith
Image
It takes a lot of doing to die.
Betty Smith
Image
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
Image
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.
Betty Smith
Image
People looking up at her--at her smooth pretty vivacious face--had no way of knowing about the painfully articulated resolves formulating in her mind.
Betty Smith
Image
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
Image
Katie had a fierce desire for survival which made her a fighter. Johnny had a hankering after immortality which made him a useless dreamer. And that was the great difference between these two who loved each other so well.
Betty Smith
Image
Well, there's a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.
Betty Smith
Image
It's come at last, she thought, the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.
Betty Smith
Previous
Next