Top 200 Betty Smith Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “It was one of the links between the ground-down poor and the wasteful rich. The girl felt that even if she had less than anybody in Williamsburg, somehow she had more. She was richer because she had something to waste.”

— Betty Smith

52. “New York! I’ve always wanted to see it and now I’ve see it. It’s true what they say – it’s the most wonderful city in the world.”

— Betty Smith

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

— Betty Smith

54. “And that’s where the whole trouble is. We’re too much alike to understand each other because we don’t even understand our own selves.”

— Betty Smith

55. “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

56. “It there’s one thing certain, it’s that we all have to get old someday. So get used to the idea as quickly as you can.”

— Betty Smith

57. “It takes a lot of doing to die.”

— Betty Smith

58. “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

59. “The difference was that Flossie Gaddis was starved about men and Sissy was healthily hungry about them. And what a difference that made.”

— Betty Smith

60. “The sad thing was in the knowing that all their nerve would get them nowhere in the world and that they were lost as all people in Brooklyn seem lost when the day is nearly over and even though the sun is still bright, it is thin and doesn’t give you warmth when it shines on you.”

— Betty Smith

61. “Maybe,” thought Francie, “she doesn’t love me as much as she loves Neeley. But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved.”

— Betty Smith

62. “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

63. “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.”

— Betty Smith

64. “If I open this envelope fifty years from now, I will be again as I am now and there will be no being old for me. There’s a long, long time yet before fifty years... millions of hours of time. But one hour has gone already since I sat here... one hour less to live... one hour gone away from all the hours of my life.”

— Betty Smith

65. “People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,” thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains – a cup of strong hot coffee when you’re blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you’re alone – just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.”

— Betty Smith

66. “Katie had married Johnny because she liked the way he sang and danced and dressed. Womanlike, she set about changing all those things in him after marriage.”

— Betty Smith

67. “Obscenity and profanity had no meaning as such among those people. They were emotional expressions of inarticulate people with small vocabularies; they made a kind of dialect.”

— Betty Smith

68. “In spite of hard unfamiliar things, there is here – hope. In the old country, a man can be no more than his father, providing he works hard. If his father was a carpenter, he may be a carpenter. He may not be a teacher or a priest. He may rise – but only to his father’s state. In the old country, a man is given to the past. Here he belongs to the future. In this land, he may be what he will, if he has the good heart and the way of working honestly at the right things.”

— Betty Smith

69. “Oh, I want to hold it all!” she cried. “I want to hold the way the night is – cold without wind. And the way the stars are so near and shiny. I want to hold all of it tight until it hollers out, ‘Let me go! Let me go!”

— Betty Smith

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

— Betty Smith

71. “It showed her that there were other worlds besides the world she had been born into and that these other worlds were not unattainable.”

— Betty Smith

72. “It was so simple that a flash of astonishment that felt like pain shot through her head. Education! That was it! It was education that made the difference! Education would pull them ut of the grame and dirt.”

— Betty Smith

73. “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

74. “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

75. “Sometimes when you had nothing at all and it was raining and you were alone in the flat, it was wonderful to know that you could have something even though it was only a cup of black and bitter coffee.”

— Betty Smith

76. “Some people do crossword puzzles. I do books.”

— Betty Smith

77. “Flossie was always running after men and they were always running away from her. Francie’s Aunt Sissy ran after men, too. But somehow they ran to meet her halfway. The difference was that Flossie Gaddis was starved about men and Sissy was healthily hungry about them. And what a difference that made.”

— Betty Smith

78. “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

79. “But she didn’t want to recall things. She wanted to live things – or as a compromise, re-live rather than reminisce.”

— Betty Smith

80. “Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie’s secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father staggering home drunk.”

— Betty Smith

81. “And she doesn’t have to worry about me, either. I don’t need to drink to get drunk. I can get drunk on things like the tulip – and this night.”

— Betty Smith

82. “Isn’t hot coffee a wonderful thing? How did people get along before it was invented?”

— Betty Smith

83. “That is the book, then, and the book of Shakespeare. And every day you must read a page of each to your child – even though you yourself do not understand what is written down and cannot sound the words properly. You must do this that the child will grow up knowing of what is great – knowing that these tenements of Williamsburg are not the whole world.” “The Protestant Bible and Shakespeare.”

— Betty Smith

84. “He’d get lost if he tried to find his way back to New York from her neighborhood. Brooklyn was tricky that way. You had to live there in order to find your way about.”

— Betty Smith

85. “She was a blameless sinless woman, yet she understood who how it was with people who sinned. Inflexibly rigid in her own moral conduct, she condoned weaknesses in others. She revered God and loved Jesus, but she understood why people often turned away from these Two.”

— Betty Smith

86. “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.”

— Betty Smith

87. “If you love someone, you’d rather suffer the pain alone to spare them.”

— Betty Smith

88. “I don’t need to drink to get drunk. I can get drunk on things like the tulip – and this night.”

— Betty Smith

89. “If there was only one tree like that in the world, you would think it was beautiful,” said Katie. “But because there are so many, you just can’t see how beautiful it really is. Look at those children.” She pointed to a swarm of dirty children playing in the gutter. “You could take any one of them and wash him good and dress him up and sit him in a fine house and you would think he was beautiful.”

— Betty Smith

90. “Obscenities are the emotional expressions of inarticulate people with small vocabularies.”

— Betty Smith

91. “Education! That was it! It was education that made the difference! Education would pull them out of the grime and dirt.”

— Betty Smith

92. “Before you die, you must own a bit of land – maybe with a house on it that your child or your children may inherit.” Katie laughed. “Me own land? A house? We’re lucky if we can pay our rent.”

— Betty Smith

93. “Everything, decided Francie after that first lecture, was vibrant with life and there was no death in chemistry. She was puzzled as to why learned people didn’t adopt chemistry as a religion.”

— Betty Smith

94. “And he asked for her whole life as simply as he’d ask for a date. And she promised away her whole life as simply as she’d offer a hand in greeting or farewell.”

— Betty Smith

95. “It doesn’t take long to write things of which you know nothing. When you write of actual things, it takes longer, because you have to live them first.”

— Betty Smith

96. “But I saved it for you because I know your mama likes tongue and I like your mama. You.”

— Betty Smith

97. “I’ll not punish you for having an imagination.”

— Betty Smith

98. “The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself. This that I see now, she thought, to see no more this way. Oh, the last time how clearly you see everything; as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn’t held it tighter when you had it every day.”

— Betty Smith

99. “There were two dozen tightly rolled, never-used silk umbrellas in that closet; prizes she had won. Flossie collected them for display the way an athlete collects cups. Francie felt happy looking at all the umbrellas. Poor people have a great passion for huge quantities of things.”

— Betty Smith

100. “You betcha they’d live, thought Francie grimly. It takes a lot of doing to die.”

— Betty Smith