Pearl S. Buck's Quotes

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Love dies only when growth stops.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life without idealism is empty indeed. We just hope or starve to death.

Hunger makes a thief of any man.

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

Love alone could waken love.

A man is educated and turned out to work. But a woman is educated and turned out to grass.

Truth is always exciting. Speak it, then; life is dull without it.

Self-expression must pass into communication for its fulfillment.

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

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.