Quotes from Betsy and Joe

Maud Hart Lovelace ·  336 pages

Rating: (4.3K votes)


“People were always saying to Margaret, 'Well, Julia sings and Betsy writes. Now what is little Margaret going to do?' Margaret would smile politely, for she was very polite, but privately she stormed to Betsy with flashing eyes, 'I'm not going to do anything. I want to just live. Can't people just live?”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, quote from Betsy and Joe


“Then he kissed her. Betsy didn't believe in letting boys kiss you. She thought it was silly to be letting first this boy and then that one kiss you, when it didn't mean a thing. But it was wonderful when Joe Willard kissed her. And it did mean a thing.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, quote from Betsy and Joe


“Say, you told me you thought Les Miserables was the greatest novel ever written. I think Vanity Fair is the greatest. Let's fight. - Joe Willard”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, quote from Betsy and Joe


“I've got to stop thinking about myself so much--about how I look, how I'm impressing someone, whether I'm popular or not. I've got to start thinking about other people, all the people I meet.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, quote from Betsy and Joe


“The older I get the more mixed up life seems. When you're little, it's all so plain. It's all laid out like a game ready to play. You think you know exactly how it's going to go. But things happen...”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, quote from Betsy and Joe



“You don't grow up, she reasoned now, until you begin to evaluate yourself, to recognize your good traits and acknowledge that you have a few faults.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, quote from Betsy and Joe


“After Commencement Day, the world!" Joe said. "With Betsy.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, quote from Betsy and Joe


About the author

Maud Hart Lovelace
Born place: in Mankato, MN, The United States
Born date April 25, 1892
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Popular quotes

“My mother tells me
that when I meet someone I like,
I have to ask them three questions:

1. what are you afraid of?
2. do you like dogs?
3. what do you do when it rains?

of those three, she says the first one is the most important.
“They gotta be scared of something, baby. Everybody is. If they aren’t afraid of anything, then they don’t believe in anything, either.”I asked you what you were afraid of.
“spiders, mostly. being alone. little children, like, the ones who just learned how to push a kid over on the playground. oh and space. holy shit, space.”
I asked you if you liked dogs.
“I have three.”
I asked you what you do when it rains.
“sleep, mostly. sometimes I sit at the window and watch the rain droplets race. I make a shelter out of plastic in my backyard for all the stray animals; leave them food and a place to sleep.”
he smiled like he knew.
like his mom told him the same
thing.
“how about you?”

me?
I’m scared of everything.
of the hole in the o-zone layer,
of the lady next door who never
smiles at her dog,
and especially of all the secrets
the government must be breaking
it’s back trying to keep from us.
I love dogs so much, you have no idea.
I sleep when it rains.
I want to tell everyone I love them.
I want to find every stray animal and bring them home.
I want to wake up in your hair
and make you shitty coffee
and kiss your neck
and draw silly stick figures of us.
I never want to ask anyone else
these questions
ever again.”
― Caitlyn Siehl, quote from What We Buried


“From this day on, I refuse to let anyone bring me to a point where I can't take a horrible situation and spin it into something beneficial. I will never let anyone make me feel anything I don't want to feel again or rob me of the passions that make me who I am.”
― Chris Colfer, quote from Struck by Lightning: The Carson Philips Journal


“That.” Jona pointed. “That is faith. You cannot measure it with weights and doses like your herbs. You cannot classify it in your books, or test it with chemics. But it is there, more powerful than any bit of old world science. Only the Creator can see the path ahead. He makes of us what he wants—what the world needs—us to be. But we can have a glimpse, looking back.”
― Peter V. Brett, quote from The Skull Throne


“Yesterday, I was sad, tomorrow i may be sad again, but today i know that i am happy. I want to live on and on, delighting like a pagan in all that is physical; and i know that this one lifetime, however long, cannot satisfy my heart.”
― Ruskin Bond, quote from Delhi Is Not Far


“At the age of ninety-two, James spent months hunched over the kitchen table, learning the alphabet, practicing his signature, and slowly progressing to reading simple children’s books. Then his wife died, sending him into a tailspin and robbing him of his motivation to learn to read. But his story doesn’t end there. At the age of ninety-six, Henry became determined to try to learn to read again. This time he not only dove back into reading, but, with the help of a retired English teacher, he began to write, longhand, about his life, his time at sea, a man he lost overboard on one voyage, and what his grandfather’s farm was like in the Azores. He finished his memoir, and when he was ninety-eight it was published and became a bestselling book called In a Fisherman’s Language. It was optioned to become a film, and his success triggered a congratulatory letter from President Obama. Henry was working on his second book when he died at age ninety-nine in 2013. Henry’s story is remarkable on many levels. First, it took a tremendous amount of grit just to get by in today’s world as an illiterate adult. Even more remarkable was his determination to overcome it later in life.”
― Linda Kaplan Thaler, quote from Grit to Great: How Perseverance, Passion, and Pluck Take You from Ordinary to Extraordinary


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