Top 200 Betty Smith Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “And always, there was the magic of learning things.”

— Betty Smith

2. “Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.”

— Betty Smith

3. “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

4. “From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.”

— Betty Smith

5. “She had become accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and to being considered ‘different.’ She did not suffer too much.”

— Betty Smith

6. “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

7. “There had to be dark and muddy waters so that the sun could have something to background it’s flashing glory.”

— Betty Smith

8. “Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!”

— Betty Smith

9. “Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.”

— Betty Smith

10. “And always, there was the magic of learning things.”

— Betty Smith

11. “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.”

— Betty Smith

12. “The world was hers for the reading.”

— Betty Smith

13. “In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.”

— Betty Smith

14. “I need someone. I need to hold somebody close. And I need more than this holding. I need someone to understand how I feel at a time like now. And the understanding must be part of the holding.”

— Betty Smith

15. “I know that’s what people say – you’ll get over it. I’d say it, too. But I know it’s not true. Oh, youll be happy again, never fear. But you won’t forget. Every time you fall in love it will be because something in the man reminds you of him.”

— Betty Smith

16. “You won’t die, Francie. You were born to lick this rotten life.”

— Betty Smith

17. “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

18. “A lie was something you told because you were mean or a coward. A story was something you made up out of something that might have happened. Only you didn’t tell it like it was, you told it like you thought it should have been.”

— Betty Smith

19. “There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky.”

— Betty Smith

20. “Well’ Francie decided, ‘I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life – and nothing else but’.”

— Betty Smith

21. “From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.”

— Betty Smith

22. “Francie thought that all the books in the world were in that library and she had a plan about reading all the books in the world.”

— Betty Smith

23. “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

24. “Dear God,’ she prayed, ’let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.”

— Betty Smith

25. “In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.”

— Betty Smith

26. “There had to be dark and muddy waters so that the sun could have something to background it’s flashing glory.”

— Betty Smith

27. “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

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

— Betty Smith

29. “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

30. “It meant that she belonged some place. She was a Brooklyn girl with a Brooklyn name and a Brooklyn accent. She didn’t want to change into a bit of this and a bit of that.”

— Betty Smith

31. “The pipe came from Sissy’s factory. The factory made a few rubber toys as a blind. It made its big profits from other rubber articles which were bought in whispers.”

— Betty Smith

32. “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

33. “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

34. “She had become accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and to being considered ‘different.’ She did not suffer too much.”

— Betty Smith

35. “A person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the bootstrap route has two choices. Having risen above his environment, he can forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the cruel upclimb.”

— Betty Smith

36. “Look at everything as though you were seeing it either first time or last time.”

— Betty Smith

37. “The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child’s life.”

— Betty Smith

38. “Everything was changing. Francie was in a panic. Her world was slipping away from her and what would take its place? Still, what was different anyhow? She read a page from the Bible and Shakespeare every night the same as always. She practiced the piano every day for an hour. She put pennies in the tin-can bank. The junk shop was still there; the stores were all the same. Nothing was changing. She was the one who was changing. She.”

— Betty Smith

39. “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

40. “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

41. “I know that’s what people say – you’ll get over it. I’d say it, too. But I know it’s not true. Oh, youll be happy again, never fear. But you won’t forget. Every time you fall in love it will be because something in the man reminds you of him.”

— Betty Smith

42. “Poor people have a great passion for huge quantities of things.”

— Betty Smith

43. “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

44. “Maybe they knew their own gift of imagination colored too rosily the poverty and brutality of their lives and made them able to endure it.”

— Betty Smith

45. “Bad quarrels come when two people are wrong. Worse quarrels come when two people are right.”

— Betty Smith

46. “Because,” explained Mary Rommely simply, “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 by 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

47. “I need someone. I need to hold somebody close. And I need more than this holding. I need someone to understand how I feel at a time like now. And the understanding must be part of the holding.”

— Betty Smith

48. “She wept when they gave birth to daughters, knowing that to be born a woman meant a life of humble hardship.”

— Betty Smith

49. “Brooklyn was a dream. All the things that happened there just couldn’t happen. It was all dream stuff. Or was it all real and true and was it that she, Francie, was the dreamer?”

— Betty Smith

50. “Books became her friends, and there was one for every mood.”

— Betty Smith