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Pearl S. Buck

66 quotes

“An intelligent, energetic, educated woman cannot be kept in four walls — even satin-lined, diamond-studded walls — without discovering sooner or later that they are still a prison cell.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: America's Medieval Women," Harper's Magazine (August 1938)
“There will be no real content among American women unless they are made and kept more ignorant or unless they are given equal opportunity with men to use what they have been taught. And American men will not be really happy until their women are.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Harper’s Magazine (August 1938), p. 232
“A man is educated and turned out to work. But a woman is educated — and turned out to grass.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) first seen 1941 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Of Men and Women (1941), Ch. 4
“Profound as race prejudice is against the Negro American, it is not practically as far-reaching as the prejudice against women. For stripping away the sentimentality which makes Mother’s Day and Best American Mother Contests, the truth is that women suffer all the effects of a minority.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) first seen 1941 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Of Men and Women (1941), Ch. 8
“Men and women should own the world as a mutual possession.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) first seen 1941 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Of Men and Women (1941), Ch. 8
“It is a shameful sign of our arrogance that our history departments have almost no Chinese history in them, our literature courses almost no Chinese literature, our philosophy departments almost none of the great Chinese systems of philosophy. And our religious schools have been the most arrogant of all. This ignorant arrogant mind has become fixed in its patterns. It is the pattern which considers anything not American to be inferior — unless it be English.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: China and the Federal Union" an address at the Federal Union organization, New York City (April 1942)
“Euthanasia is a long, smooth-sounding word, and it conceals its danger as long, smooth words do, but the danger is there, nevertheless.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Child Who Never Grew (1950), Ch. 2
“Because psychologists have been able to discover, exactly as in a slow-motion picture, the way the human creature acquires knowledge and habits, the normal child has been vastly helped by what the retarded have taught us.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Child Who Never Grew (1950)
“I love people. I love my family, my children … but 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 (1892–1973) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The New York Post (26 April 1959)
“All things are possible until they are proved impossible — and even the impossible may only be so, as of now.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Bridge for Passing (1962)
“One does not live half a life in Asia without return. When it would be I did not know, nor even where it would be, or to what cause. In our changing world nothing changes more than geography. The friendly country of China, the home of my childhood and youth, is for the time being forbidden country. I refuse to call it enemy country. The people in my memory are too kind and the land too beautiful.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Bridge for Passing (1962)
“What is a neglected child? He is a child not planned for, not wanted. Neglect begins, therefore, before he is born.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Children for Adoption (1964). Ch. 3
“[On the Chinese] They are marvellous friends and frightful enemies.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: TV interview, The Merv Griffin Show, RITY Archive (1966)
“[On Communism] It's a curious, impossible, impractical scheme of life, not based on anything sound, psychologically.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: TV interview, The Merv Griffin Show, RITY Archive (1966)
“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 (1892–1973) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Joy of Children (1966)
“Nothing and no one can destroy the Chinese people. They are relentless survivors. They are the oldest civilized people on earth. Their civilization passes through phases but its basic characteristics remain the same. They yield, they bend to the wind, but they never break.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: China, Past and Present (1972) Ch. 1
“Ah well, perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: China, Past and Present (1972) Ch. 6
“There was an old abbot in one temple and he said something of which I think often and it was this, that when men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Quotable Woman (1978) by Elaine T Partnow, p. 226. "When men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place" has sometimes been quoted as her original statement, though she states th…
“The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Know Your Limits — Then Ignore Them (2000) by John Mason, p. 46
“The young do not know enough to be prudent, and so they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in An Apple for the Teacher: Fundamentals for Instructional Computing (1983) by George H. Culp and Herbert N. Nickles, p. 190; also in Youth Quake: A Manifesto (2002) by Cousin Sam, p. 31
“The Chinese novel was written primarily to amuse the common people. And when I say amuse I do not mean only to make them laugh, though laughter is also one of the aims of the Chinese novel. I mean amusement in the sense of absorbing and occupying the whole attention of the mind. I mean enlightening that mind by pictures of life and what that life means.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Did one man write Shui Hu Chuan, or did it grow to its present shape, added to, rearranged, deepened and developed by many minds and many a hand, in different centuries? Who can now tell? They are dead. They lived in their day and wrote what in their day they saw and heard, but of themselves they have told nothing.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Strangely enough, there were certain scholars who envied the freedom of obscurity, and who, burdened with certain private sorrows which they dared not tell anyone, or who perhaps wanting only a holiday from the weariness of the sort of art they had themselves created, wrote novels too, under assumed and humble names. And when they did so they put aside pedantry and wrote as simply and naturally as any common novelist. For the novelist believed that he should not be conscious of techniques. He should write as his material demanded.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These Chinese novels are not perfect according to Western standards. They are not always planned from beginning to end, nor are they compact, any more than life is planned or compact. They are often too long, too full of incident, too crowded with character, a medley of fact and fiction as to material, and a medley of romance and realism as to method, so that an impossible event of magic or dream may be described with such exact semblance of detail that one is compelled to belief against all reason”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Out of this folk mind, turned into stories and crowded with thousands of years of life, grew, literally, the Chinese novel. For these novels changed as they grew. If, as I have said, there are no single names attached beyond question to the great novels of China, it is because no one hand wrote them. From beginning as a mere tale, a story grew through succeeding versions, into a structure built by many hands.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The people of China forged their own literature apart from letters. And today this is what lives, to be part of what is to come, and all the formal literature, which was called art, is dead. The plots of these novels are often incomplete, the love interest is often not brought to solution, heroines are often not beautiful and heroes often are not brave. Nor has the story always an end; sometimes it merely stops, in the way life does, in the middle of it when death is not expected. In this tradition of the novel have I been born and reared as a writer.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The street is noisy and the men and women are not perfect in the technique of their expression as the statues are. They are ugly and imperfect, incomplete even as human beings, and where they come from and where they go cannot be known. But they are people and therefore infinitely to be preferred to those who stand upon the pedestals of art.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Story belongs to the people. They are sounder judges of it than anyone else, for their senses are unspoiled and their emotions are free.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe with all my heart that jimcrow is wicked and I know that it is a rotten core in our society. I know that we cannot say that we are a full democracy so long as jimcrow exists anywhere in our country. I will fight against it and refuse to countenance it in all was that I can, as long as I live. And yet I know that were all jimcrow laws to be abolished tomorrow, the war for the lberation of mankind would still not be won here. There would still be those not free, not equal.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The greatest blow for freedom that was ever struck in the world's history, perhaps, was when Abraham Lincoln decided that the slaves of the South were to be free and he freed them. The South collapsed. The gentlemen who could spend their time fighting, sure of supplies from slave-tended lands, began to starve and go ragged. Their homes began to fall into ruin and their families to be hungry. Their morale was broken. The war was really won by the pen upon the paper which wrote these words, "are and henceforward shall be free.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I suppose Abraham Lincoln knew that was what would happen. He was very wise in the ways of men. He knew how people think and feel. Doubtless he knew that deeper than anything else in the hearts of men everywhere is the wish for simple freedom- freedom without any promises even of protection, of food, of security- just freedom. He knew that those people, so long bond, would leave even comfortable sheltered places where masters were kind, if they could only be free.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe in human beings, but my faith is without sentimentality. I know that in environments of uncertainty, fear, and hunger, the human being is dwarfed and shaped without his being aware of it, just as the plant struggling under a stone does not know its own condition. Only when the stone is removed can it spring up freely into the light. But the power to spring up is inherent, and only death puts an end to it. I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Like Confucius of old, I am absorbed in the wonder of earth, and the life upon it, and I cannot think of heaven and the angels. I have enough for this life. If there is no other life, than this one has been enough to make it worth being born, myself a human being. With so profound a faith in the human heart and its power to grow toward the light, I find here reason and cause enough for hope and confidence in the future of mankind.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The common sense of people will surely prove to them someday that mutual support and cooperation are only sensible for the security and happiness of all. Such faith keeps me continually ready and purposeful with energy to do what one person can towards shaping the environment in which the human being can grow with freedom.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the midst of possible world war, of wholesale destruction, I find my only question this: are there enough people now who believe? Is there time enough left for the wise to act? It is a contest between ignorance and death, or wisdom and life. My faith in humanity stands firm.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I became mentally bifocal, and so I learned early to understand that 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 damage such perception did to me I have felt ever since, although damage may be too dark a word, for it merely meant that I could never belong entirely to one side of any question. To be a Communist would be absurd to me, as absurd as to be entirely anything and equally impossible. I straddled the globe too young.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In 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. … I came home more torn in heart than any child should be, for I saw that each side was right as well as wrong, and I yearned over both in a helpless fashion, unable to see how, history being what it was, anything now could be done.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Chinese are wise in comprehending without many words what is inevitable and inescapable and therefore only to be borne.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am an inveterate homemaker, it is at once my pleasure, my recreation, and my handicap. Were I a man, my books would have been written in leisure, protected by a wife and a secretary and various household officials. As it is, being a woman, my work has had to be done between bouts of homemaking.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Chinese were born, it seemed to me, with an accumulated wisdom, a natural sophistication, an intelligent naiveté, and unless they were transplanted too young, these qualities ripened in them. To talk even with a farmer and his family, none of whom could read or write, was often to hear a philosophy at once sane and humorous. 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 (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yet somehow 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 in the way that it cares for its helpless members.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Praise out of season, or tactlessly bestowed, can freeze the heart as much as blame.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Order is the shape upon which beauty depends.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source