Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Universal
Struggle
Open
Sorrowful
Came
Fullness
Clear
Joyful
Live
Fulfillment
Love
Holds
Life
Conclusion

More quotes by 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
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
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
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
Image
Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!
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
Someday you'll remember what I said and you'll thank me for it. Francie wished adults would stop telling her that. Already the load of thanks in the future was weighing her down. She figured she'd have to spend the best years of her womanhood hunting up people to tell them that they were right and to thank them.
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
We'll leave now, so that this moment will remain a perfect memory...let it be our song and think of me every time you hear it.
Betty Smith
Image
A child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things.
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
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
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
From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.
Betty Smith
Image
They learned no compassion from their own anguish. thus their suffering was wasted.
Betty Smith
Image
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.
Betty Smith
Image
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
Image
Look at everything as though you are seeing it for the first time.
Betty Smith
Image
Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.
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