Pearl S. Buck Quotes & Sayings

For no country is a true democracy whose women have not an equal share in life with men, and until we realize this we shall never achieve a real democracy on this earth. — Pearl S. Buck

When we define democracy now it must still be as a thing hoped for but not seen. — Pearl S. Buck

Nothing and no one can destroy the Chinese people. They are relentless survivors. — Pearl S. Buck

The head raised too high even in good will be struck off too soon. — Pearl S. Buck

When people work beyond their destiny, all they do fails. — Pearl S. Buck

Somehow I had learned from Thoreau, who doubtless learned it from Confucius, that if a man comes to do his own good for you, then must you flee that man and save yourself — Pearl S. Buck

What is a neglected child? He is a child not planned for, not wanted. Neglect begins, therefore, before he is born. — Pearl S. Buck

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word-excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it. — Pearl S. Buck

An Englishman is never afraid of being laughed at. He just thinks the other fellow is a fool. But Americans still can't risk anybody laughing at them. — Pearl S. Buck

...the relationships between the five elements. What are the five elements? They are wood, fire, earth, metal, water. These create, and also destroy, each other....
On the side of creation, wood creates fire; fire, as ash, creates earth. In earth there is metal: metal melts to become liquid. Water creates trees, or wood. On the side of destruction, wood consumes water through trees; earth can stop water; water destroys fire; fire destroys metal; but metal in an instrument destroys wood....Within this circle of creation and destruction man must live harmoniously, with ebb and flow, in tune with all that exists. — Pearl S. Buck

We send missionaries to China so the Chinese can get to heaven, but we won't let them into our country. — Pearl S. Buck

The heart never grows old. — Pearl S. Buck

War is the most devastating endemic and epidemic disease the human race has to endure, and yet too little has been done to discover and eliminate its cause by intelligent early control. — Pearl S. Buck

Happiness was waiting to be chosen. — Pearl S. Buck

Never reproach him with his own weakness, for then he will become wholly weak. Never let him feel that but for you he would be useless, for then he will indeed become useless. You must search for the few strong threads in him and weave your fabric with those, and where the threads are weak, never trust to them. Supply your own in secret. — Pearl S. Buck

Nothing in life is as good as the marriage of true minds between man and woman. As good? It is life itself. — Pearl S. Buck

What seems new is only new to us. — Pearl S. Buck

Believing in gods always causes confusion. — Pearl S. Buck

The body was so little a part of him that its final stillness seemed nothing of importance. He was half out of it anyway and death was only a slipping out of it altogether and being at last what he always was, a spirit. We buried the pearly shell upon the mountain top. — Pearl S. Buck

It is love itself that is important
the ability to love, no matter whom you love. For when you can no longer love anyone, you are no longer a living person. The heart dies if it loses the capacity to love. — Pearl S. Buck

Only the brave should teach ... Teaching is a vocation. It is as sacred as priesthood; as innate a desire, as inescapable as the genius which compels a great artist. If he has not the concern for humanity, the love of living creatures, the vision of the priest and the artist, he must not teach. — Pearl S. Buck

It is better not to say "lend." There is only giving. — Pearl S. Buck

Whatever came to him was good. It was life. It was knowledge. — Pearl S. Buck

Love can never be a sin. It can be only a blessing. Even if you're not loved in return
though I can't imagine that
to love is a proof of life
indeed, it's the only proof, for once you can't love another human being, you're not alive. — Pearl S. Buck

The proper place to eat lobster ... is in a lobster shack as close to the sea as possible. There is no menu card because there is nothing else to eat except boiled lobster with melted butter. — Pearl S. Buck

I should like to penetrate your mind with my own," he said. "I should like to pierce the mysteries of your soul. — Pearl S. Buck

When one commits one's self to an airborne craft and the door is fastened against earth and home, there is no escape even by running away. The result is a strange sense of peace - desperate, perhaps, but peace. — Pearl S. Buck

As for their child, I am moved in two ways. He will have his own world to make. Being of neither East nor West purely, he will be rejected of each, for none will understand him. But I think, if he has the strength of both his parents, he will understand both worlds, and so overcome. — Pearl S. Buck

The days of my youth are past and to a woman full grown a kiss means everything - or nothing. — Pearl S. Buck

I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels. — Pearl S. Buck

It is not poverty that is to be heared, but the lack of balance between riches and poverty. — Pearl S. Buck

In silence they lay close, without passion, but closer than passion could bring them they lay close. — Pearl S. Buck

Hope must come out of what we have, or it is not hope, but a dream. — Pearl S. Buck

We must have hope or starve to death. — Pearl S. Buck

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 wanted to begin now. But how to begin and on what? — Pearl S. Buck

We need to restore the full meaning of that old word, duty. It is the other side of rights. — Pearl S. Buck

Is man all man and is woman all woman? If so, they will never come together, since he lives for his own being and she lives for universal life, and these are opposites. — Pearl S. Buck

Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns to be amused rather than shocked. — Pearl S. Buck

The melting-pot idea is futile ... The brew in a melting pot is always boiling over. — Pearl S. Buck

Life is the wonder with which we are all infused. — Pearl S. Buck

A foreigner is a friend I have yet to meet. — Pearl S. Buck

But what happens when her beauty is torn from her like a cover from a book? Will he care to read her then, although her pages speak of nothing but love for him? — Pearl S. Buck

Never, if you can possibly help it, write a novel. It is, in the first place, a thoroughly unsocial act. It makes one obnoxious to one's family and to one's friends. One sits about for many weeks, months, even years, in the worst cases, in a state of stupefaction. — Pearl S. Buck

Peter groaned loudly. "Sonia Pan! She's ugly."
Mris. Liang would not yield. "Ugly girls can be fixed now. It is not like before. And she is very good. She does not waste money."
"It would be no use for her to waste money on herself," Louise murmured. — Pearl S. Buck

Every event has had its cause, and nothing, not the least wind that blows, is accident or causeless. — Pearl S. Buck

In the ancient Book of History, upon which Confucius himself based his philosophy, it is said ...
The people must be cherished,
The people must not be oppressed,
The people are the root of the country.
If the root is firm, the country is tranquil.
And you remember, she continued, that, when asked which was most important to a state, food, weapons or the trust of the people, the sage replied that weapons could be given up, and even food be sacrificed, but the state itself would be destroyed if the people had no confidence in it. — Pearl S. Buck

It was strange how these poems came to him nowadays, the distillation of his private emotions, of his disillusionment, of his solitude, of his yearning for a future in which, nevertheless, he could not believe. — Pearl S. Buck

You are an artist," she said. "But then all scientists are artists, my father used to say. You think like an artist, at any rate, and I can see that you want what you create to be a work of art. — Pearl S. Buck

She had always been too wise to tell him all she thought and felt, knowing by some intuition of her own womanhood that no man wants to know everything of any woman. — Pearl S. Buck

My first vivid memory is ... when first I looked into her face and she looked into mine. That I do remember, and that exchanging looks I have carried with me all of my life. We recognized each other. I was her child and she was my mother. — Pearl S. Buck

To understand what happens now one must find the cause, which may be very long ago in its beginning, but is surely there, and therefore a knowledge of history as detailed as possible is essential if we are to comprehend the present and be prepared for the future. — Pearl S. Buck

Life is stronger than death. — Pearl S. Buck

He was part of a whole, a people scattered over the earth and yet eternally one and indivisible. Wherever a Jew lived, in whatever safety and isolation, he still belonged to his people. — Pearl S. Buck

It is the end of a family- when they begin to sell their land. Out of the land we came and into we must go - and if you will hold your land you can live- no one can rob you of land. — Pearl S. Buck

Yet there were times when he did love her with all the kindness she demanded, and how was she to know what were those times? Alone she raged against his cheerfulness and put herself at the mercy of her own love and longed to be free of it because it made her less than he and dependent on him. But how could she be free of chains she had put upon herself? Her soul was all tempest. The dreams she had once had of her life were dead. She was in prison in the house. And yet who was her jailer except herself? — Pearl S. Buck

Old One," the tenant said apologetically. "It is none of my business and I ought to die, but after all they are the children of your elder brother's son who after all is the first in the next generation after you. — Pearl S. Buck

Is our Heaven your God, and is your God our Heaven?' she inquired.
'They are one and the same,' he replied ...
'There is only one true God. He has many names.'
'Then anywhere upon the round earth, by whatever seas, those who believe in any God believe in the One?' she asked.
'And so are brothers,' he said, agreeing.
'And if I do not believe in any?' she inquired willfully.
'God is patient,' he said. 'God waits. Is there not eternity?'
page 206 Pavilion of Women — Pearl S. Buck

Starvation is a shame and disgrace to the world and totally unnecessary in modern times. — Pearl S. Buck

Just about everything significant in my life happened after I passed forty. I was a housewife and mother, but yearned to be a writer. I worked at my writing whenever I could snatch a moment, and I assembled several manuscripts. I was just about forty when my first novel, East Wind, West Wind, was published. Then a few months later came The Good Earth. My career was launched at last, and it has given me the richest possible satisfaction — Pearl S. Buck

Like Confucius of old, I am so absorbed in the wonder of the earth and the life upon it, that I cannot think of heaven and the angels. — Pearl S. Buck

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. — Pearl S. Buck

Purposeless activity may be a phase of death. — Pearl S. Buck

None but the ignorant can be bored by life. To the lovers of learning, life is pure adventure shared with adventurers. — Pearl S. Buck

Our bodies can be mobilized by law and police and men with guns, if necessary-but where shall we find that which will make us believe in what we must do, so that we can fight through to victory? — Pearl S. Buck

The community must assume responsibility for each child within its confines. Not one must be neglected whatever his condition. The community must see that every child gets the advantages and opportunities which are due him as a citizen and as a human being. — Pearl S. Buck

Throw eggs at a rock, and though one uses all the eggs in the world, the rock remains the same. — Pearl S. Buck

There is no beauty without order. — Pearl S. Buck

Science and religion, religion and science, put it as it may, they are the two sides of the same glass, through which we see darkly until these two focus together, reveal the truth. — Pearl S. Buck

The best government in the world, the best religion, the best traditions of any people, depend upon the good or evil of the men and women who administer them. — Pearl S. Buck

We learn as much from sorrow as from joy, as much from illness as from health, from handicap as from advantage - and indeed perhaps more. — Pearl S. Buck

The feet bear the burden of the body, the head the burden of the mind, and the heart the burden of the spirit. — Pearl S. Buck

It is natural anywhere that people like their own kind, but it is not necessarily natural that their fondness for their own kind should lead them to the subjection of whole groups of other people not like them. — Pearl S. Buck

Prejudice ... is a subjective emotion which expresses itself upon others only because of an inner necessity for release. The object is irrelevant and opportune. The person who feels prejudice is the victim of himself and his own unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Life is not what he wants it to be and it has not been what he wishes it had been. — Pearl S. Buck

Fate is unalterable only in the sense that given a cause, a certain result must follow, but no cause is inevitable in itself, and man can shape his world if he does not resign himself to ignorance. — Pearl S. Buck

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration. — Pearl S. Buck

Love must be taken on the tide, before it ebbs. — Pearl S. Buck

You must set forth and find the center of your interest. You are a creator, but you must find your interest and then dedicate yourself to that interest - not to the act of creativity. Merely to want to create will make it impossible for you to do so. You must find an interest greater than yourself - a love, perhaps - and then the power to create will set you on fire. — Pearl S. Buck

We can't stop time, but it will sometimes stand still for love. — Pearl S. Buck

His problem was the eternal question: What should he be? Inventor, scientist, artist - the energy he felt surging through him, an energy far more than physical and yet pervading the restlessness of his body, was a burden to him until he could find the path for its release. — Pearl S. Buck

don't know what to tell you," he said slowly. "I have not had time to think much about myself. Wherever I have been - at least until now, I have been mostly alone. The others were always much bigger - much older." He paused to consider himself in the past. "Older in years, that is," he amended. "I've always been too old for myself." She looked at him thoughtfully. "Then you have an old soul. — Pearl S. Buck

I believe in the equality of man and woman," Rulan insisted.

"Ah," Madame Wu said, "two equals are nevertheless not the same two things. They are equal in importance, equally necessary to life, but not the same, — Pearl S. Buck

The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it. — Pearl S. Buck

But no, it was not the small single moment which had killed him. It was the anger of all his life here in this house which he himself had built and lived in and hated all his years. — Pearl S. Buck

It is not healthy when a nation lives within a nation, as colored Americans are living inside America. A nation cannot live confident of its tomorrow if its refugees are among its own citizens. — Pearl S. Buck

You are right," he had said. "Love is not the word. No one can love his neighbor. Say, rather, 'Know thy neighbor as thyself." That is, comprehend his hardships and understand his position, deal with his faults as gently as with your own. Do not judge him where you do not judge yourself. Madame, this is the meaning of the word love. — Pearl S. Buck

When men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place. — Pearl S. Buck

No longer can we afford to stuff the brains of the young with facts. The time is too short, the necessity for results too pressing. The new education must be based on the elimination of facts except as they illustrate principles. How to use facts, not how to accumulate them, is the purpose of true education. — Pearl S. Buck

I am not given to superstition, yet there are certain places in old Asian countries where human beings have been born and have lived and died for so many generations that the very earth is saturated with their flesh and the air seems crowded with their continuing presence. — Pearl S. Buck

It is difficult not to wonder whether that combination of elements which produces a machine for labor does not create also a soul of sorts, a dull resentful metallic will, which can rebel at times. — Pearl S. Buck

It is the highest reward when a writer hears when a book written in doubt and solitude, has reached a human heart with a deeper meaning than even the writer had been aware of, as she wrote. It is something extra, the unexpected return. — Pearl S. Buck

Nothing is menial where there is love. — Pearl S. Buck

If life were known one moment ahead, how could it be endured? — Pearl S. Buck

Upon the profound discontent of the young in every country do I set my faith. I beg you, the young, to be discontented. I pray that you may rebel against what is wrong, not with feeble negative complaining but with strong positive assertion of what is right for all humanity. — Pearl S. Buck

And from that time on the boys were no longer called Elder and Younger, but they were given school names by the old teacher, and this old man, after inquiring into the occupation of their father, erected two names for the sons; for the elder, Nung En, and for the second Nung Wen, and the first word of each name signified one whose wealth is from the earth. — Pearl S. Buck

And looked sharply across the street. There was only one house — Pearl S. Buck

People everywhere do not concern themselves much beyond the common round of everyday, and this is the chief problem for a democratic government, whose success depends upon an informed and responsible citizenry. — Pearl S. Buck

If you start to revise before you've reached the end, you're likely to begin dawdling with the revisions and putting off the difficult task of writing. — Pearl S. Buck

demands the utmost in wisdom, in attack, in endurance. Violence is simple and easy, it is the sword of the stupid and dull-witted, and it always leaves chaos. To carry on a positive revolution without violence - ah, that is a challenge to intelligence! — Pearl S. Buck

All that had been was now no more. — Pearl S. Buck

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 to sink into it. Out of the dark and sullen bottom of a lake the lotus flowers bloomed upon its surface, and she would pluck the flowers. — Pearl S. Buck