Pearl Buck Quotes & Sayings

All in all, Vermont is a jewel state, small but precious. — Pearl S. Buck

Love alone could waken love. — Pearl S. Buck

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

There will never cease to be ferment in the world unless people are sure of their food. — Pearl S. Buck

Now, five years is nothing in a man's life except when he is very young and very old ...
- Wang Lung — Pearl S. Buck

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

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. It is awful to see the lean hands of dotage making a coffer of the grave. — Pearl S. Buck

Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored - it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on. — Pearl S. Buck

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

Men of action," whose minds are too busy with the day's work to see beyond it. They are essential men, we cannot do without them, and yet we must not allow all our vision to be bound by the limitations of "men of action. — 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

A woman's mind is not an instrument apart from her other being. She does not separate herself as man does, now flesh, now mind, now heart. She is there as one, a unity complete and unified. — Pearl S. Buck

Doing and being are very closely tied together, and unless you are doing what you secretly want to do, you aren't able to be the sort of person you want to be. — Pearl S. Buck

Every era of renaissance has come out of new freedoms for peoples. The coming renaissance will be greater than any in human history, for this time all the peoples of the earth will share in it. — Pearl S. Buck

At my age the bones are water in the morning until food is given them. — 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

If I do anything, I have to start over, but all I have is fragments of ideas. Just pieces. Like a germ of an idea for this, and a germ of an idea for that. Nothing whole or concrete" - Violet

" 'Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.' Pearl S. Buck. Maybe a germ is enough. Maybe it's all you need. We can start small. Open up a new document or pull out a black piece of paper. We'll make it our canvas. Remember what Michelangelo said about the sculpture being in the stone - it was there from the beginning, and his job was to bring it out. Your words are in there too" -Finch — Jennifer Niven

Caregivers, like all of us, inevitably reflect their culture's attitude toward children and life. The story goes that when Pearl Buck was a child in China, someone asked how she compared her mother to her Chinese amah. Buck replied, "If I want to have a story read, I go to my mother. But if I fall down and need to be comforted, I go to my amah." Her mother's culture valued teaching and learning, while her amah's placed a greater value on nurture. Even as a child, Buck instinctively knew the difference. — David C. Pollock

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

I wish to produce the fruit of my brain for my country's good. A mere dog may fill the earth with the fruit of his body! — Pearl S. Buck

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

In the case of acupuncture, the time period must also be considered. On a fine day, the sun shining, blood in the human body flows smoothly, saliva is free, breathing is easy. On days of chill and cloud, blood flows thick and slow, breathing is heavy, saliva is viscous. When the moon is waxing, blood and breath are full. When the moon wanes, blood and breath wane. Therefore acupuncture should be used only on fair warm days, when the moon is waxing or, best of all, when the moon is full.'
'Interesting,' Grace said in a comment, 'in bioclimatic research in the West, coronary attacks increase in frequency on cold chilly days when the sun is under clouds.'
Dr Tseng turned the page of his blue cloth-covered book. 'Ah, doubtless the barbarians across the four seas have heard of our learning,' he observed without interest. — Pearl S. Buck

For Nature is not unjust. She does not steal into the womb and like an evil fairy give her good gifts secretly to men and deny them to women. Men and women are born free and equal in ability and brain. The injustice begins after birth. — Pearl S. Buck

To take each day as a separate page, to be read carefully, savoring all of the details, this is best for me, I think. — Pearl S. Buck

He saw on the paper a picture of a man, white-skinned, who hung upon a crosspiece of wood. The man was without clothes except for a bit about his loins, and to all appearences he was dead, since his head drooped upon his shoulder and his eyes were closed above his bearded lips. Wang Lung looked at the pictured man in horror and with increasing interest. — Pearl S. Buck

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

The mistakes of history bring relentless reprisals. — 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

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

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

He could have been lonely except that he was never lonely, since he had always been alone. — 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

Growth itself contains the germ of happiness. — Pearl S. Buck

Order is the shape upon which beauty depends. — Pearl S. Buck

The narrator refers to a character as an oily scoundrel whose hands were heavy with the money that stuck to them. — Pearl S. Buck

Love cannot be forced, love cannot be coaxed and teased. It comes out of heaven, unasked and unsought. — Pearl S. Buck

Purposeless activity may be a phase of death. — 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

When hope is taken away from a people, moral degeneration follows swiftly thereafter. — 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

The test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members — Pearl S. Buck

All birth is unwilling. — Pearl S. Buck

On this earth, though far and near, without love, there's only fear. — 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

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

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

He lived in the rich city as alien as a rat in a rich man's house that is fed on scraps thrown away, and hides here and there and is never a part of the real life of the house. — Pearl S. Buck

God is not in the vastness of greatness. He is hid in the vastness of smallness . He is not in the general. He is in the particular. — Pearl S. Buck

What shall I do?" she asked in a small voice.
"Forget your own self," he said.
"But all these years," she urged, "I have so carefully fulfilled my duty."
"Always with the thought of your own freedom in your mind," he said.
She could not deny it. She sat motionless, her hands folded on the pearl-gray satin of her robe. "Direct me," she said at last.
"Instead of your own freedom, think how you can free others," he said gently.
She lifted her head.
"From yourself," he said still gently. — 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

People on the whole are very simple-minded, in whatever country one finds them. They are so simple as to take literally, more often than no, the things their leaders tell them. — Pearl S. Buck

What the common man cannot understand he hates. — Pearl S. Buck

Destructiveness comes only when life isn't lived. People who can live their lives don't destroy themselves. — Pearl S. Buck

When foreigners come into a nation, the best way is to make them no longer foreign. That is to say, let us marry our young together and let there be children. War is costly, love is cheap. — Pearl S. Buck

Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up. — Pearl S. Buck

None on earth can love those who declare that they alone are the sons of God. — 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

People don't care to read what they already think or what any people think - they know all that well enough. They want to know what they ought to think. — Pearl S. Buck

It may be that religion is dead, and if it is, we had better know it and set ourselves to try to discover other sources of moral strength before it is too late. — 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

To live in the midst of danger is to know how good life is," his father replied.
"But if we are lost in the danger?" Kino asked anxiously.
"To live in the presence of death makes us brave and strong," Kino's father replied. "That is why our people never fear death. We see it too often and we do not fear it. To die a little later or a little sooner does not matter. But to live bravely, to lobe life, to see how beautiful the trees are and the mountains, yes, even the sea, to enjoy work because it produces food for life - in these things we Japanese are a fortunate people. We love life because we live in danger. We do not fear death because we understand that life and death are necessary to each other."
"What is death?" Kino asked.
"Death is the great gateway," Kino's father said. — Pearl S. Buck

Now it has been said from ancient times that all women who weep may be divided into three sorts. There are those who lift up their voices and their tears flow and this may be called crying; there are those who utter loud lamentations but whose tears do not flow and this may be called howling; there are those whose tears flow but who utter no sound and this may be called weeping. Of all those women who followed Wang Lung in his coffin, his wives and his sons' wives and his maid servants and his slaves and his hired mourners, there was only one who wept and it was Pear Blossom. — Pearl S. Buck

And listening to all the things they would do if they had these things, Wang Lung heard only of how much they would eat and sleep, and of what dainties they would eat that they had never tasted,and how they would gamble in this great tea shop and in that, and what pretty women they would buy for their lust, and above all, how none would ever work again, even as they rich man behind the wall never worked. — 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

was not death for which she grieved, but life, life which had carved his mouth into such sorrow and had set hollows underneath his eyes, which had given him dreams of love in his youth and then had robbed him, had given him dreams in his age of free islands in a blue and tropic sea and had held him locked in a drab house in a little town. And as cruel as anything was death, which revealed him like this, when he was helpless any longer to hide that which alive he had hidden. She went away crying most passionately to her heart, "We ought all to be free. Everybody ought to be free for himself, somehow. No one ought to come to death and never have known what freedom is." When — Pearl S. Buck

It certainly must have been a relief for women of the country to realize that one could be a woman and a lady and yet be thoroughly political. — Pearl S. Buck

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

Love dies only when growth stops. — Pearl S. Buck

To do good, to love justice, to grant that all men had an equal right to a pleasant life, these things Kung Chen believed in, and believing, he did all he could to perform his belief. — 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

Chinese were bornwith an accumulated wisdom, a natural sophistication, an intelligent naivete, and unless they were transplanted too young, these qualities ripened in them ... If ever I am homesick for China, now that I am home in my own country, it is when I discover here no philosophy. Our people have opinions and creeds and prejudices and ideas but as yet no philosophy. — Pearl S. Buck

[I]n any war a victory means another war, and yet another, until some day inevitably the tides turn, and the victor is the vanquished, and the circle reverses itself, but remains nevertheless a circle. — Pearl S. Buck

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him ... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create
so that
without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating. — Pearl S. Buck

We must have this rule, for there are those whose hearts are so hard that they will come and buy this rice that is given for the poor--for a penny will not feed any man like this--and they will carry the rice home to feed to their pigs for slop. And the rice is for men and not for pigs" (Buck, 105). — Pearl S. Buck

Vermont is a country unto itself. — Pearl S. Buck

He had other fires and these flamed higher than Love. — Pearl S. Buck

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

When the people of any country choose peace at all costs, not even generals can make war. — Pearl S. Buck

Through the eight books in 'The Treasure Chest' series, readers will meet twins Maisie and Felix and learn the secrets and rules of time travel, where they will encounter some of these famous and forgotten people. In Book 1, Clara Barton, then Alexander Hamilton, Pearl Buck, Harry Houdini, and on and on. — Ann Hood

Only people who are assured of daily food can concern themselves with matters of principle and ethic. A man will become a slave rather than starve. — 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

I do not believe in a child world. It is a fantasy world. I believe the child should be taught from the very first that the whole world is his world, that adult and child share one world, that all generations are needed. — Pearl S. Buck

thing and it could be sold for a heap of silver and sometimes — 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

To hate another human being is to take a worm into one's own vitals. It consumes life. — Pearl S. Buck

Integrity is honesty carried through the fibres of the being and the whole mind, into thought as well as action so that the person is complete in honesty. That kind of integrity I put above all else as an essential to leadership. — Pearl S. Buck

there is no such condition in human affairs as absolute truth. There is only truth as people see it, and truth, even in fact, may be kaleidoscopic in its variety. The — Pearl S. Buck

If I have a handful of silver it is because I work and my wife works, and we do not, as some do, sit idling over a gambling table or gossiping on doorsteps never swept, letting the fields grow to weeds and our children go half-fed!" (Buck, 65) — Pearl S. Buck

The bitterest creature under heaven is the wife who discovers that her husband's bravery is only bravado, that his strength is only a uniform, that his power is but a gun in the hands of a fool. — 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

If a superior man undertakes something and tried to lead,
He goes astray.
But if he follows, he finds guidance.
It is favourable to find friends in the West and South,
and quiet perseverance brings good fortune. — 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

Self-expression must pass into communication for its fulfillment. — Pearl S. Buck

Now, as they were all looking at the new moth, she, too, went to look at it. It was of a creamy yellow color, like the yellow of the lemon called Buddha's Hand, and it had long black antennae. These quivered as it felt itself impaled. The wide wings fluttered and dark spots upon them showed green and gold for a moment. Then the moth was still. "How quickly they die!" Ch'iuming said suddenly. — 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

Of course imagination is the beginning of creation. Without imagination there can be no creation. — Pearl S. Buck