Top 200 Betty Smith Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 2 of 5

51. “Gradually, as the children grew up, Katie lost all her tenderness although she gained in what people call character. She became capable, hard and far-seeing. She loved Johnny dearly but all the old wild worship faded away. She loved her little girl because she felt sorry for her. It was pity and obligation toward her that she felt rather than love.”

— Betty Smith

52. “What must I do, Mother, what must I do to make a different world for her? How do I start?” “The secret lies in the reading and the writing. You are able to read. Every day you must read one page from some good book to your child. Every day this must be until the child learns to read. Then she must read every day, I know this is the secret.” “I will read,” promised Katie. “What is a good book?”

— Betty Smith

53. “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

54. “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

55. “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

56. “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

57. “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

58. “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

59. “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

60. “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

61. “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

62. “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

63. “It takes a lot of doing to die.”

— Betty Smith

64. “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

65. “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

66. “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

67. “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

68. “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

69. “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

70. “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

71. “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

72. “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

73. “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

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

— Betty Smith

75. “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

76. “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

77. “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

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

— Betty Smith

79. “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

80. “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

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

— Betty Smith

82. “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

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

— Betty Smith

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

— Betty Smith

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

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

— Betty Smith

88. “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

89. “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

90. “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

91. “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

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. “Life’s too short. If you ever find a man you love, don’t waste time hanging your head and simpering. Go right up to him and say, “I love you. How about getting married?”

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

— Betty Smith

96. “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. There was poetry for quiet companionship.”

— Betty Smith

97. “Hope ever urges on, and tells us tomorrow will be better.”

— Betty Smith

98. “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

99. “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

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

— Betty Smith