Quote

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

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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
Enough
Giving
Something
Charity
Strength
Food
Give
Back
Live

More quotes by Betty Smith

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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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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.
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She had heard Papa sing so many songs about the heart the heart that was breaking - was aching - was dancing -was heavy laden - that leaped for joy - that was heavy in sorrow - that turned over - that stood still. She really believed the heart actually did those things.
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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
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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
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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
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From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.
Betty Smith
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The world was hers for the reading.
Betty Smith
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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.
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In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't get mixed up. It was the best advice Francie every got.
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Well, there's a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.
Betty Smith
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Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.
Betty Smith
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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
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In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.
Betty Smith
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They learned no compassion from their own anguish. thus their suffering was wasted.
Betty Smith
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She had had the pain it had been like being boiled alive in scalding oil and not being able to die to get free of it
Betty Smith
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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
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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
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A child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things.
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Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.
Betty Smith