Top 200 Betty Smith Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “The difference between rich and poor”, said Francie, “is that the poor do everything with thier own hands and the rich hire hands to do things.”

— Betty Smith

102. “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

103. “And Francie whispered yeah in agreement. She was proud of that smell. It let her know that nearby was a waterway, which, dirty though it was, joined a river that flowed out to the sea. To her, the stupendous stench suggested far-sailing ships and adventure and she was pleased with the smell.”

— Betty Smith

104. “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

105. “I wait for death with the courage I gained from living.”

— Betty Smith

106. “Francie always remembered what that kind teacher told her. “You know, Francie, a lot of people would think that these stories that you’re making up all the time were terrible lies because they are not the truth as people see the truth. 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.”

— Betty Smith

107. “People looking up at her – at her smooth pretty vivacious face – had no way of knowing about the painfully articulated resolves formulating in her mind.”

— Betty Smith

108. “That is what is called learning the truth. It is a good thing to learn the truth one’s self. To first believe with all your heart, and then not to believe, is good too. It fattens the emotions and makes them to stretch. When as a woman life and people disappoint her, she will have a practice in disappoinment and it will not come so hard. In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.”

— Betty Smith

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

— Betty Smith

110. “All of us are what we have to be and everyone lives the kind of life its in him to live.”

— Betty Smith

111. “A child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things.”

— Betty Smith

112. “Last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself.”

— Betty Smith

113. “She was surprised at how tiny the school seemed now. She supposed it was just as big as it had ever been only her eyes had grown used to looking at bigger things.”

— Betty Smith

114. “Seems like I’m the most dissatisfied person in the whole world. Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!”

— Betty Smith

115. “In the winter, when the first snow was too delicate to last on the sidewalks, it clung to the rough surface of the brick and was like fairy lace.”

— Betty Smith

116. “Pipe dreams, he thought to himself, even while he was telling her about his dream winnings. But oh, how wonderful, he thought, if everything you talked about could come true!”

— Betty Smith

117. “They were in Julius Caesar now and the stage direction “Alarum” confused Katie. She thought it had something to do with fire engines and whenever she came to that word, she shouted out “clang-clang.” The children thought it was wonderful.”

— Betty Smith

118. “She adapted herself to the split-second rhythm of the New Yorker going to and from work. Getting to the office was a nervous ordeal. If she arrived one minute before nine, she was a free person. If she arrived one minute after, she worried because that made her the logical scapegoat of the boss if he happened to be in a bad mood that day.”

— Betty Smith

119. “It was the best advice Francie ever got. Truth and fancy were so mixed up in her mind – as they are in the mind of every lonely child – that she didn’t know which was which. But Teacher made these two things clear to her. From that time on, she wrote little stories about things she saw and felt and did. In time, she got so that she was able to speak the truth with but a slight and instinctive coloring of the facts.”

— Betty Smith

120. “Ghosts are not always those who pass through closed doors,” said Mary Rommely. “Katie has told how her husband used to talk to this saloon man. In all those years of the talking, Yohnny gave away pieces of himself to this man. When Katie called on her man for help, the pieces of him came together in this man, and it was Yohnny within the saloon man’s soul that heard and came to her help.”

— Betty Smith

121. “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

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

— Betty Smith

123. “School days went along. Some were made up of meanness, brutality, and heartbreak; others were bright and beautiful because of Miss Bernstone and Mr. Morton. And always, there was the magic of learning new things.”

— Betty Smith

124. “Arriving at the store, she walked up and down the aisles handling any object her fancy favored. What a wonderful feeling to pick something up, hold it for a moment, feel its contour, run her hand over its surface and then replace it carefully. Her nickel gave her this privilege. If a floor-walker asked whether she intended buying anything, she could say, yes, buy it and show him a thing or two. Money was a wonderful thing, she decided.”

— Betty Smith

125. “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

126. “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

127. “Run, run, you fool, before the waves of hurt start breaking.”

— Betty Smith

128. “Eyes changed after they looked at new things.”

— Betty Smith

129. “They were all slender, frail creatures with wondering Wes and soft fluttery voices. But they were all made out of thin invisible steel.”

— Betty Smith

130. “Debe haber aguas turbias y oscuras para que el sol tenga algo que enmarque su deslumbrante gloria.”

— Betty Smith

131. “Francie looked at her legs. They were long, slender, and exquisitely molded. She wore the sheerest of flawless silk stockings, and expensively made high-heeled pumps shod her beautifully arched feet. “Beautiful legs, then, is the secret of being a mistriss,” concluded Francie. She looked down at her own long thin legs. “I’ll never make it, I guess.” Sighing, she resigned herself to a sinless life.”

— Betty Smith

132. “Funny! A person lives one way and he thinks all people live that way because there is no other way. Then he goes away somewhere and sees there are other ways to live.”

— Betty Smith

133. “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. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence, and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography.”

— Betty Smith

134. “Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife?”

— Betty Smith

135. “I will not speak falsely and say to you: ‘Do not grieve for me when I go.’ I have loved my children and tried to be a good mother and it is right that my children grieve for me. But let your grief be gentle and brief. And let resignation creep into it. Know that I shall be happy. I shall see face to face the great saints I have loved all my life.”

— Betty Smith

136. “Neeley came home and he and Francie were sent out for the weekend meat. This was an important ritual and called for detail instructions by mama.”

— Betty Smith

137. “The parents were too American, too aware of the rights granted them by their Constitution to accept injustices meekly. They could not be bulldozed and exploited as could the immigrants and the second-generation Americans.”

— Betty Smith

138. “Good-bye, Francie.”

— Betty Smith

139. “There were times though, especially towards the end of a long cold dark winter, when, no matter how hungry Francie was, nothing tasted good. That was big pickle time.”

— Betty Smith

140. “Neeley, if you had to die, wouldn’t it be wonderful to die now – while you believed that everything was perfect, the way this night is perfect?”

— Betty Smith

141. “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

142. “All she’d notice was that some things were strange because they reminded her of Brooklyn and that other things were strange because they were so different from Brooklyn. “I guess there is nothing new, then, in the world,” decided Francie unhappily. “If there is anything new or different, some part of it must be in Brooklyn and I must be used to it and wouldn’t be able to notice it if I came across it.”

— Betty Smith

143. “Tell the truth and write the story.”

— Betty Smith

144. “Oh, to be a Chinaman, wished Francie, and have such a pretty toy to count on; oh, to eat all the lichee nuts she wanted and to know the mystery of the iron that was ever hot and yet never stood on a stove. Oh, to paint those symbols with a slight brush and a quick turn of the wrist and to make a clear black mark as fragile as a piece of a butterfly wing! That was the mystery of the Orient in Brooklyn.”

— Betty Smith

145. “The library was a little old shabby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in. She liked the combined smell of worn leather bindings, library paste and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked the smell of burning incense at high mass.”

— Betty Smith

146. “I can never give a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ I don’t believe everything in life can be settled by a monosyllable.”

— Betty Smith

147. “Vaccination is a very good thing. It makes you tell your left hand from your right.”

— Betty Smith

148. “Well, there’s a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.”

— Betty Smith

149. “Growing up ruins everything.”

— Betty Smith

150. “A small child has little idea of the future. Next week is as far ahead as his future stretches and the year between Christmas and Christmas again is an eternity.”

— Betty Smith