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Age
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Ah well, perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked.
-Pearl Buck
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Attitude
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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 Buck
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Authors & Writing
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Be born anywhere, little embryo novelist, but do not be born under the shadow of a great creed, not under the burden of original sin, not under the doom of Salvation.
-Pearl Buck
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Beauty
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It is better to be first with an ugly woman than the hundredth with a beauty.
-Pearl Buck, The Good Earth, Chapter 1., 1931
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Children
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What is a neglected child? He is a child not planned for, not wanted. Neglect begins, therefore, before he is born.
-Pearl Buck
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Communication
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Self-expression must pass into communication for its fulfillment.
-Pearl Buck, The Writer's Book
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Creativity
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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 Buck
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Death
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Like Confucius of old, I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and the angels. I have enough for this life. If there is no other life, then this one has been enough to make it worth being born, myself a human being.
-Pearl Buck, I Believe, 1939
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Debt / Borrow / Loan
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Man was lost if he went to a usurer, for the interest ran faster than a tiger upon him.
-Pearl Buck
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Feelings
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You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.
-Pearl Buck
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Freedom
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None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.
-Pearl Buck
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Growth
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Love dies only when growth stops.
-Pearl Buck
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Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.
-Pearl Buck
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Heaven
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We send missionaries to China so the Chinese can get to heaven, but we won't let them into our country.
-Pearl Buck
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Identity
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Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that is where I renew my springs that never dry up.
-Pearl Buck
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Love
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Love alone could waken love.
-Pearl Buck
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Marriage
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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 Buck
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Mind, the
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Nothing in life is as good as the marriage of true minds between man and woman. As good? It is life itself.
-Pearl Buck
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Mistakes
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Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.
-Pearl Buck
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Mother
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Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same -- and most mothers kiss and scold together.
-Pearl Buck
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Nation, Nationality, Nationalism
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Nothing and no one can destroy the Chinese people. They are relentless survivors.
-Pearl Buck
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Praise
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Praise out of season, or tactlessly bestowed, can freeze the heart as much as blame.
-Pearl Buck
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Service
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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.
-Pearl Buck, My Several Worlds, 1954
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To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind.
-Pearl Buck
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Slavery
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Men would rather be starving and free than fed in bonds.
-Pearl Buck
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Books by and about Pearl Buck