Pearl S. Buck Quotes

To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth.

To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

Chinese are wise in comprehending without many words what is inevitable and inescapable and therefore only to be borne.

In our changing world nothing changes more than geography.

Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together.

Exclusion is always dangerous. Inclusion is the only safety if we are to have a peaceful world.

All in all, Vermont is a jewel state, small but precious.

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

Hunger makes a thief of any man.

The test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members

You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.

When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail.

A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.

Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.

All things are possible until they are proved impossible - and even the impossible may only be so, as of now.

Truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.

Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that is where I renew my springs that never dry up.

The boundary between civilization and barbarism is difficult to draw: put one ring in your nose and you are a savage, put two rings in your ears and you are civilized.

Euthanasia is a long, smooth-sounding word, and it conceals its danger as long, smooth words do, but the danger is there, nevertheless.

There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.

If our American way of life fails the child, it fails us all.

music is not technique and melody, but the meaning of life itself, infinitely sorrowful and unbearably beautiful.

None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.

Let woman out of the home, let man into it, should be the aim of education. The home needs man, and the world outside needs woman.

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

Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.

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.

Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.

there is one word that can be the guide for your life- it is the word reciprocity.

Most mothers kiss and scold together.

It is good to know our universe. What is new is only new to us.

Fatalism is a false premise. What will be is not necessarily what must be.

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.

A hungry man can't see right or wrong. He just sees food.

A person's heart withers if it does not answer another heart.

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.

You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.

I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.

To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind.

A foreigner is a friend I have yet to meet.

One faces the future with one's past.

What the common man cannot understand he hates.

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

If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.

To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death.

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 a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.

In this unbelievable universe in which we live, there are no absolutes. Even parallel lines, reaching into infinity, meet somewhere yonder.

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible - and achieve it, generation after generation.

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

Love dies only when growth stops.