Pearl S. Buck

Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns to be amused rather than shocked.

— Pearl S. 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.

— 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

Man was lost if he went to a usurer, for the interest ran faster than a tiger upon him.

— 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

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

— Pearl S. Buck

Love dies only when growth stops.

— Pearl S. Buck

Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.

— 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 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

Love alone could waken love.

— 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

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

— Pearl S. Buck

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

— Pearl S. Buck

Nothing and no one can destroy the Chinese people. They are relentless survivors.

— 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

Praise out of season, or tactlessly bestowed, can freeze the heart as much as blame.

— Pearl S. Buck

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

— Pearl S. Buck

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

— Pearl S. Buck

Men would rather be starving and free than fed in bonds.

— 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

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

— Pearl S. Buck

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

— Pearl S. Buck

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

— Pearl S. Buck

Go out and be born among gypsies or thieves or among happy workaday people who live with the sun and do not think about their souls.

— Pearl S. Buck

I contemplate death as though I were continuing after its arrival. I, therefore, survive since I can contemplate myself afterward as well as before.

— 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

For our democracy has been marred by imperialism, and it has been enlightened only by individual and sporadic efforts at freedom.

— Pearl S. Buck

There must be acceptance and the knowledge that sorrow fully accepted brings its own gifts. For there is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom ….

— Pearl S. Buck

When hope is taken away from the people moral degeneration follows swiftly after.

— Pearl S. Buck