“The child will grow up and find out things for herself. She will know that I lied. She will be disappointed.""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 had practice in disappointment 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“Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.”
Betty Smith“Look at everything as though you were seeing it for the first time or the last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.”
Betty Smith“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 the 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“The something which had been a future was now a present and would become a past.”
Betty Smith“Look at everything as though you were seeing it either first time or last time.”
Betty Smith, Youth Takes Over“This 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."Katie: " The Protestant Bible and Shakespeare.”
Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn“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, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn“Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.”
Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn“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, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn“The child will grow up and find out things for herself. She will know that I lied. She will be disappointed.""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 had practice in disappointment 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, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn