Pearl S. Buck

Quotes

• “He saw on the paper a picture of a man, white-skinned, who hung upon a crosspiece of wood. The man was without clothes e...”
• “The old deep sadness of life lay in the bottom of her heart and she knew it was there, but she would not allow herself t...”
• “Yes, she now believed that when her body died, her soul would go on. Gods she did not worship, and faith she had none, b...”
• “For he came to perceive that since people were his study, his teachers, the objects through which he could satisfy his p...”
• “Fate is unalterable only in the sense that given a cause, a certain result must follow, but no cause is inevitable in it...”
• “We should so provide for old age that it may have no urgent wants of this world to absorb it from meditation on the next...”
• “The bitterest creature under heaven is the wife who discovers that her husband's bravery is only bravado, that his stren...”
• “Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of...”
• “An intelligent, energetic, educated woman cannot be kept in four walls — even satin-lined, diamond-studded walls — witho...”
• “Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored — it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over tho...”
• “Somehow I had learned from Thoreau, who doubtless learned it from Confucius, that if a man comes to do his own good for ...”
• “There was no need to hurry that future—yet the length of his own youth pressed upon him. Whatever he was to do next he w...”
• “In a mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a wri...”
• “If you start to revise before you've reached the end, you're likely to begin dawdling with the revisions and putting off...”
• “I am comforted by life's stability by earth's unchangeableness. What has seemed new and frightening assumes its place i...”
• “Crowds moved wherever he went, across the bridge to Manhattan, in New York, wherever he went, life flowed and eddied, bu...”
• “Wandering is never waste, dear boy,' he said. 'While you wander you will find much to wonder about, and wonder is the fi...”
• “In this unbelievable universe in which we live there are no absolutes. Even parallel lines reaching into infinity mee...”
• “Fear alone makes man weak. If you are afraid, your hands tremble, your feet falter, and your brain cannot tell hands and...”
• “Once the "what" is decided the "how" always follows. We must not make the "how" an excuse for not facing and accepting ...”
• “The young do not know enough to be prudent and therefore they attempt the impossible-and achieve it generation after g...”
• “Let woman out of the home, let man into it, should be the aim of education. The home needs man, and the world outside ne...”
• “Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold to...”
• “None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not...”
• “However impatient she might be in the day, however filled with little sudden angers, at night she was all tenderness.”
• “To take each day as a separate page, to be read carefully, savoring all of the details, this is best for me, I think.”
• “A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.”
• “Inside myself is a place where I live all alone, and that's where I renew my springs that never dry up. ~Pearl Buck”
• “I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to earth.”
• “The narrator refers to a character as "an oily scoundrel whose hands were heavy with the money that stuck to them.”
• “The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.”
• “The secret of joy in work is contained in one word-excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.”
• “This was his mind, a storehouse, a computer programmed to life, minute by minute, hour by hour, day and night.”
• “To those at the great house it means nothing, this handful of earth, but to me it means how much!" (Buck, 57)”
• “Nothing in life is as good as the marriage of true minds between man and woman. As good? It is life itself.”
• “All things are possible until they are proved impossible and even the impossible may only be so, as of now.”
• “All things are possible until they are proved impossible-and even the impossible may only be so as of now.”
• “And to him war was a thing like earth and sky and water and why it was no one knew but only that it was.”
• “Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that is where I renew my springs that never dry up.”
• “Of course imagination is the beginning of creation. Without imagination there can be no creation.”
• “You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.”
• “A man is educated and turned out to work. But a woman is educated — and turned out to grass.”
• “We need to restore the full meaning of that old word duty. It is the other side of rights.”
• “When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail.”
• “When we know what we want to prove we go out and find our facts. They are always there.”
• “Praise out of season or tactlessly bestowed can freeze the heart as much as blame.”
• “When hope is taken away from the people moral degeneration follows swiftly after.”
• “Introversion at least if extreme is a sign of mental and spiritual immaturity.”
• “It is better to be first with an ugly woman than the hundreth with a beauty.”
• “Truth is always exciting. Speak it then life is dull without it.”