Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
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
Never
Read
People
Tell
Right
Feel
Feels
Way
Good
Listen
Things
Wrong
More quotes by 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
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
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
From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.
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
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
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
Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!
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
In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.
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
It's come at last, she thought, the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.
Betty Smith
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
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
It takes a lot of doing to die.
Betty Smith
Suffering is also good, it makes a person rich in charachter.
Betty Smith
Well, there's a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.
Betty Smith
As she read, at peace with the world and happy as only a little girl could be with a fine book and a little bowl of candy, and all alone in the house, the leaf shadows shifted and the afternoon passed.
Betty Smith
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.
Betty Smith
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
