Pearl S. Buck Quotes

The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.

I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.

Love changes,” she replied. “When the flame dies, the glow remains, but it no longer centers upon one human creature and it warms the whole soul. Then the soul looks at all human creatures with love diffused.

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

Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored — it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on. It is not healthy when a nation lives inside a nation, as colored Americans are living inside America. A nation cannot live confident of its tomorrow if its refugees are among its own citizens. For it is never the one who suffers injustice who is the injured one, but the one who is unjust. Slavery bred a race of idle and shiftless white men, and race prejudice continues the evil work. White people who insist on their superority because of the color of the skin they were born with- can there be so empty and false a superiority as this? Who is injured the most by that foolish assumption, the colored or the white? In his soul it s the white man. It is the wise white people who ought now to be angry because of race prejudice, for as surely as night follows day our country will fail in its democracy because of race prejudice unless we root it out. We cannot grow in strength and leadership for democracy so long as we carry deep in our being this fatal fault.

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

Do not test the measure of his love for you by the way he expresses his body's heat. He is not thinking of you at those times. He is thinking of himself.

It is the highest reward when a writer hears when a book written in doubt and solitude, has reached a human heart with a deeper meaning than even the writer had been aware of, as she wrote. It is something extra, the unexpected return.

It is sweet to be loved, but to be able to love is to possess the life force. I love you. Therefore I am strong. Whatever my age, I am sustained by my own power to love.

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

To understand what happens now one must find the cause, which may be very long ago in its beginning, but is surely there, and therefore a knowledge of history as detailed as possible is essential if we are to comprehend the present and be prepared for the future.

"To shut one's door while others suffer, to care only for one's own, disclaiming responsibility for humanity, is to destroy all good impulse and to build up a deadly selfishness which will be a boomerang in its effect upon ourselves. Let our own children see the opportunity now theirs for Americanism in the best and traditional sense. There was never a better hour than this to be an American." May 1940, Christian Herald.

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

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

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.