"Oh time...time, pass so that I forget! Oh time, Great Healer, pass over me and let me forget."
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Quote collection
Betty Smith quotes (page 5 of 5)
99 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Suffering is also good, it makes a person rich in charachter."
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"Because 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 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."
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"I can never give a 'yes' or a 'no.' I don't believe everything in life can be settled by a monosyllable."
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"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."
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"There is here, what is not in the old country. 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 many 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."
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"Books became her friends, and there was one for every mood."
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"Well' Francie decided, 'I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life - and nothing else but'."
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"We'll leave now, so that this moment will remain a perfect memory...let it be our song and think of me every time you hear it."
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"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."
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"Francie was ten years old when she first found an outlet in writing. What she wrote was of little consequence. What was important was that the attempt to write stories kept her straight on the dividing line between truth and fiction. If she had not found this outlet in writing, she might have grown up to be a tremendous liar."
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"It takes a lot of doing to die."
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"No. I don't want to need anybody. I want someone to need me ... I want someone to need me."
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"A child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things."
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"Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!"
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"Occasionally there is a moment in a person's life when he takes a great stride forward in wisdom, humility, or disillusionment. For a split second he comes into a kind of cosmic understanding. For a trembling breath of time he knows all there is to know. He is loaned the gift the poet yearned for - seeing himself as others see him."
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"Bad quarrels come when two people are wrong. Worse quarrels come when two people are right."
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"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."
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"It's a beautiful religion and I wish I understood it more. No, I don't want to understand it all. It's beautiful because it's always a mystery. Sometimes I say I don't believe in God and Jesus and Mary. I'm a bad Catholic because I miss mass once in a while and I grumble when, at confession, I get a heavy penance for something I couldn't help doing. But good or bad, I am a Catholic and I'll never be anything else. Of course, I didn't ask to be born Catholic, no more than I asked to be born American. But I'm glad it turned out that I'm both these things."
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