Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Betty Smith
Age: 75 †
Born: 1896
Born: December 15
Died: 1972
Died: January 17
Author
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Elisabeth Lillian Wehner
People
Resolve
Pretty
Knowing
Vivacious
Looking
Formulating
Face
Resolves
Faces
Articulated
Mind
Painfully
Way
Smooth
More quotes by Betty Smith
Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.
Betty Smith
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
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
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
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
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. 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
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
From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.
Betty Smith
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
Well, there's a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.
Betty Smith
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
There's a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky.
Betty Smith
Suffering is also good, it makes a person rich in charachter.
Betty Smith
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
The world was hers for the reading.
Betty Smith
No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky. It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps, and it was the only tree that grew out of cement. It grew lushly, but only in the tenements districts.... That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people.
Betty Smith
Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!
Betty Smith
Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It's growing out of sour earth. And it's strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way.
Betty Smith
Some people do crossword puzzles. I do books.
Betty Smith
No. I don't want to need anybody. I want someone to need me ... I want someone to need me.
Betty Smith
