264 Quotes by Betty Smith

If you love someone, you'd rather suffer the pain alone to spare them.

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

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.

Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time.

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.

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.

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

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

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.