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They learned no compassion from their own anguish. thus their suffering was wasted.

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
Anguish
Wasted
Thus
Compassion
Learned
Suffering

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It takes a lot of doing to die.
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Look at everything as though you are seeing it for the first time.
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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.
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'Dear God,' she prayed, 'let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.'
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From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Books became her friends, and there was one for every mood.
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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.
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Well, there's a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.
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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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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.
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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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And 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.
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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.
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The world was hers for the reading.
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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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In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.
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